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Rockbridge County Public Schools is working on allocating funds received through Governor Youngkin’s All In initiative.
The total amount of money provided by the state to the county for the initiative is $728,015, which is broken down into four categories. The majority of the funding, $509,610, or 70%, is to be spent on tutoring and learning acceleration programs, while the rest is to be divided between preparation for the Virginia Literacy Act, addressing chronic absenteeism, and additional operating expenses.
“When most of us think of tutoring it’s, ‘after school, come to my room, we’ll sit for 45 minutes, and we’ll go over this,’” Timothy Martino, assistant superintendent of instruction and administration, told the embers of the School Board at their meeting last week.
What the division is planning now is to set aside structured time during the school day.
“We’re going to have a tutoring system during the day. We have blocks of intervention time that we’re going to use for this. You don’t get anybody’s best at 4, 4:30, especially children. And quite frankly, our teachers, by 4:30, 5 o’clock, they’re tired too.”
Tutoring will be worked into the schools’ regular schedules.
“It’s not more; they’ll just be doing something different than what they’ve done up to this point. Our elementary and our middle schools already have these blocks built in, so our master schedules are in pretty good shape,” said Martino.
The division hopes to use its own teachers as much as possible.
“We’ll use our own folks as much as we can,” said Superintendent Phillip Thompson. “They’re the best in the business.”
A soft rollout of the new system is expected to start in November.
An additional $145,603 has been allocated for preparation for the Virginia Literacy Act.
Passed in 2022 and updated in 2023, the Virginia Literacy Act is a state-level program aimed at improving student reading outcomes.
According to the Virginia Department of Education, “[The VLA] focuses on improving literacy outcomes for all students in the Commonwealth. The VLA requires that each local school board shall provide a program of literacy instruction that is aligned with science-based reading research and provides evidenced-based literacy instruction to students in kindergarten through grade eight.”
In Rockbridge, most of this funding will be put toward materials, as officials look forward to implementing the University of Florida Literacy Institute’s curriculum.
“For the Virginia Literacy Act, most of that’s going to go to materials. There’s going to be a lot of things we need to put in teacher’s hands,” Martino explained. “If we expect them to do this, we have give them the items to make it effective.”
For now, the district is waiting for the state’s finalized list of approved materials.
The remaining portion of the All In funding, $72,801, is to be spent on student attendance recovery and addressing chronic absenteeism.
“The attendance portion of the All In plan focuses on creating a community task force to provide recommendations on how to reduce chronic absenteeism. Dr. Matt Crossmam, director of School Services, is leading this group,” Martino told The News-Gazette.
“The All In spending plan is new; this is the first time we have received All In money to address chronic absenteeism.”
While most of the spending plans are in their early stages, the division is looking forward to new programs, said Martino.
“It’s an exciting time in the division,” he said, “There’s a lot of good things going on.”
