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Lexington City Schools is working on allocating funds received through Governor Younkin’s All In initiative.
“The governor recommended that school divisions focus on an All In approach that uses 70% of the allocated funds on grades three through five intensive tutoring, 20% on Virginia Literacy Act implementation, a 10% addressing concerns about chronic absenteeism,” Rebecca Walters, district superintendent, told the School Board at its meeting last week.
“Our total allocation for the All In plan is $173,579. Seventy percent of that for the tutoring program comes out to a little over 121,000; 20 percent for the Virginia Literacy Act is almost 35,000; and 10 percent for chronic absenteeism is about 17,300,” she explained.
Buena Vista is getting over $346,000 through this initiative, most of which will be put toward a new after-school tutoring program, while Rockbridge County Public Schools (as reported last month), is getting $728,000.
While Walters said that Lexington was still in the “planning phases,” the division is looking to implement additional tutoring for students, and to continue training teachers in reading instruction.
“We will be working on a plan to offer some high dosage tutoring to some of our students in the areas of math and reading either during school or after, depending on what we are able to work out for each of our schools,” she told the Board. “We’re looking at providing some summer tutoring for some of our students who were chronically absent during the school year to give them a bit of a jump start entering the summer.
“Our hope is to begin our tutoring program a fter t he fi rst of t he year. We need time to figure out what that looks like in our schedule, who will be our tutors, what training needs to be implemented, and what students are going to be encouraged to participate in that program,” she said.
“Some of the things we are planning to do are to continue our professional development to train all of our elementary K-5 teachers, in evidence- based learning instructional strategies,” Walters said.
The new state funding for literacy aligns with some of the plans already underway in Lexington.
“This continues our effort to have all of our elementary teachers Orton- Gillingham [reading program] trained. That was something that was already in the plan. This fits very nicely with this funding source that supports the initiative of the Virginia Literacy Act,” said Walters.
The district will put the remaining funding toward combating chronic absenteeism.
“We’re planning to implement some attendance incentives as we continue to work on a district focus of increasing our attendance, and then we’re looking at providing a small stipend for one of our office staff who is doing some work for us on attendance, doing some additional responsibilities in that area,” said Walters.
