– Sir William Haley

Located in Lynchburg is a school which prides itself in the education of the whole child. James River Day School (JRDS) is a private, non-sectarian school located on Boonsboro Road. The faculty and staff of the school pride themselves on the fact that their school works towards the fulfillment of each and every child that attends there.

“We are a child centered school,” Kirsten McHenry, Director of Admissions, explained. “Our instruction is hands-on and active. We learn by doing. We encourage creativity and problem-solving. We play. We wonder. We are close knit.”

The school was founded over 40 years ago by parents who were also teachers that believed that their children needed the education that only a small classroom environment could provide.  That tradition has been expanded and carried into today.

“We have very high academic standards and a thoughtful, rigorous core curriculum that is taught in inventive ways to individual students, based on what each of them need, as individuals,” McHenry said.

Among JRDS’ many programs, their focus on an individual approach also means pairing each child with another student who is one step ahead in their education—a mentor program, of sorts.

“We have a Cardinal Buddies program that pairs older and younger students, and we do many activities together as a whole school,” McHenry said.

While children are the top priority, JRDS also focuses on the parent-student relationship and how to best engage parents in the education process.

“We have strong parent education programs on child development and other topics of interest to parents, including nutrition and internet safety,” McHenry said.

Academically, JRDS strives to educate the whole child. Their program of study is reviewed yearly to make sure that a coherent curriculum is presented from kindergarten through eighth grade. Realizing that it is an impossible task to teach everything, the school focuses on teaching their students to ask essential questions. These essential questions are designed to be meaningful from the youngest learner in kindergarten all the way through the oldest students in eighth grade, including: “Who belongs? Who decides?  What is success?  What is freedom?  How do you know a true friend?”

With small class sizes—14 students per class on average—teachers are able to focus actively on individual strengths and shape instruction accordingly. McHenry explains that two classes of English instruction in grades 5-8, focusing on grammar, composition and literature, ensuring that students practice reading and writing for both pleasure and analysis. Instruction in world language, visual arts, music and physical education begins in kindergarten.

Technology instruction, part of JRDS’ K-8 curriculum, requires that students use technology for research, communication, presentation and analysis. In addition, public speaking opportunities are embedded in the curriculum at all grade levels.

“Our students graduate James River Day School well prepared for college preparatory programs in any secondary school,” McHenry said. “Our students have opportunities to accelerate in mathematics and world language, if appropriate, enabling some eighth graders to complete Honors Algebra II, French II, and/or Spanish II before graduation.  Eighth graders also take a high school credit class in Earth Science.”

In addition to the typical topics taught to the students K-8th grade, such as the science, social studies, math and language arts listed above, students also take French, Spanish or, when older, Latin as a foreign language. They also take part in musical courses such as band, orchestra or Glee club, and are given a healthy dose of physical education.

The school grounds contain a nature trail, outdoor classrooms and a greenhouse so that the academics can go beyond the bounds of the four walls of a classroom. To further this beyond the classroom mentality, students take several field trips, including overnight trips, to historical sites and students in the sixth grade take part in an outdoor leadership program. Every grade level also participates in a community service project.

The school’s comprehensive website lists some of the projects that the students take part in, which include:

• Making cards and decorations for Meals on Wheels
• Paper recycling
• Taking turns ringing the bell for the Salvation Army
• Collecting shoes and stuffed animals for Gleaning for the World (the JRDS community collects over 7,000 cans of food in November for local food banks)
• Writing and illustrating picture books for the Books of Hope project, for students in Africa who have no books in their schools
• Walking to the Fire House at Thanksgiving to bring a meal to the firemen.

McHenry adds that in addition to the above, “students in grades 5-8 belong to multi-age advisory groups that meet twice a day, have study hall together and do various social and service activities together.”

These same students also participate in athletics, with volleyball, soccer, cross-country, basketball and lacrosse all offered at JRDS.

When asked what she expected the school to be doing in five years, Mary Riser, Head of School said, “In five years, I expect James River will be doing what it is doing now—thriving! Our athletic and arts programs are developing rapidly, so we’ll be a force on the field and on the stage.”

With so many educational and inspiring stories coming out of JRDS, Riser has a lot to be proud of. And yet, when asked, she responded, “What makes me most proud? We do what is best for the child.”

James River Days School is a special place. If you visit the campus, you can see the unique appeal of this school in the faces of both the students and the staff.  The extensive grounds are visually appealing and offer opportunities for an application of the things learned inside the classroom. JRDS works to imbue within its alumni that lifelong desire to know what William Haley spoke of.

All in all, the James River Day School offers a valued service in the educating of the next generation of leaders to the community of Lynchburg and the surrounding area.

One of the primary goals of school systems everywhere is making sure that all children have access to the best possible education. The Hutcherson Early Learning Center, a part of Lynchburg City Schools (LCS), has teamed up with the Office of Special Education in the Virginia Department of Education to provide that equitable education to all students.  Beginning with some of the youngest of learners, Hutcherson is reaching out to service pre-schoolers with disabilities in the Lynchburg area through an educational process called inclusion.

Inclusion is an educational practice that has risen to prominence in recent years.  According to Judy Trent, Principal of Hutcherson Early Learning Center, inclusion is “educating a child with disabilities with children who are developing typically to learn social interaction and appropriate responses.” The inclusion program is called Inclusive Placement Opportunities for Pre-Schoolers or IPOP.

The IPOP program began four years ago when the number of self-contained students with disabilities—where the qualifying students were taught in settings removed from typical learners—was at about 90 percent. Now, the number of inclusion students stands at 95 percent with only 10 students working in self-contained classrooms. This is a fact that Trent is very pleased with as they have seen significant gains in the children as well as increasing interaction among families of inclusion students and those of more typical learners.

Typical learners have gained in other ways as well, as research shows that these learners receive leadership and coping skills. According to Trent, the program “teaches diversity from the roots up.”

Hutcherson Early Learning Center receives assistance from a Training and Technical Assistance Center, or T/TAC, located at James Madison University. Cheryl Henderson, a co-director of the James Madison T/TAC, explains that T/TACs are regional offices of the Office of Special Education Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). There are seven T/TACs in the state, all located at state universities.

“The universities are our fiscal agents, but our directives come from Richmond,” Henderson said. “We provide training and professional development, conferences, long-term assistance, classroom consulting, lending libraries, quarterly newsletters and other resources to personnel who work with students with disabilities, birth through high school in the public schools and community agencies.”

Another key element of T/TAC, according to Trent, is administrative support, which she describes as vital to the strength of the program. Because inclusion is a district-wide initiative that doesn’t just occur in pre-school, but continues throughout the different grade levels, that support is imperative to its success.

The relationship between T/TAC and Hutcherson Early Learning Center developed four years ago when Lynchburg City Public Schools responded to a statewide school Superintendents’ memo related to inclusive programming for preschool children with disabilities. In response to federal government special education requirements and proven effective practices in the field of early childhood special education, the early childhood specialist at the VDOE and the early childhood personnel at the T/TACs had been providing long-term technical assistance (three to four years at each site) and training to school divisions which were interested in increasing the number of preschoolers with disabilities who were receiving their education in inclusive sites.

“Each year there was an application process and a division or two chosen in each T/TAC region,” Henderson explained. “Lynchburg applied, was accepted and the relationship began! Wyllys vanDerwerker, director of special education for LCS, was instrumental in the development of the initiative; he continues to support the program’s goals, including those with attendance, at monthly team meetings.”

The program doesn’t just affect the students that attend Hutcherson Early Learning Center. It also has a direct impact on several local pre-school programs that don’t fall under the umbrella of Lynchburg City Schools. These pre-school programs are given direct training four times a year. Not only does this help these pre-schools meet mandated training requirements for licensure, it also helps to build scaffolding for these centers to truly meet the needs of their students.

In addition to these trainings, Hutcherson Early Learning Center also has an extensive and comprehensive lending library that contains a multitude of resources available to programs that may not have the financial wherewithal to purchase their own materials.  Some of the assistance offered to pre-school programs is in direct correlation with T/TAC, which offers on-going support by staying up-to-date on the latest inclusion strategies through trainings, assisting with learning resources, as well as “support at monthly IPOP team meetings, and consulting on specific situations and issues as they arise,” according to Henderson.

“The Lynchburg team began, and has continued, with a strong team representing a cross-section of programs and services in the Lynchburg community,” she said. “School division personnel had already been embedded in some of the programs and had positive relationships with personnel from those programs. With the IPOP initiative, placements have expanded and relationships have strengthened.”

With nothing but praise for the program, Henderson believes that Trent and her team at Hutcherson Early Learning Center, as well as the district as a whole “has been open and receptive to suggestions, works as a team, and has a strong commitment to sustaining this initiative to educate children in their least restrictive environment as mandated by federal and state law.”

Perhaps what has driven the program’s success the most at Hutcherson Early Learning Center, however, is the camaraderie of the staff and their desire to help the students who walk their halls.

“They are a great team with which to collaborate and are a wonderful example of school-community partnership that has been recognized throughout the Commonwealth,” Henderson said.

Educators spend a lot of time building what Thoreau called “castles in the air.” The dreams of a truly equitable education, the building of strong citizens and future leaders, the imagining of a prosperous, equal society all float majestically in the hopes of teachers everywhere. At Hutcherson Early Learning Center, with the assistance of JMU’s T/TAC and the hard work and initiative of Lynchburg City educators, the foundations to those castles are being built.

“The new accreditation will advance our program in several ways,” Hank Yochum, program director, said.

For colleges and universities, ABET accreditation is the recognized accreditor for engineering, applied sciences, technology and computing programs. Currently, 650 colleges and universities worldwide are accredited by ABET. The purpose of accreditation is to ensure that the program meets the set standards and requirements regarding quality of the school and its program.

“As a relatively new program, this validation is particularly important for us,” Yochum said.

One valuable part of being accredited is that more internships and job opportunities will be made available to students since ABET accreditation is required in many engineering jobs. The status also provides greater scholarship opportunities for students.

“In engineering, accreditation is sort of a ‘must have,’” Scott Pierce, associate professor, said, adding that graduate schools and potential employers look for accreditation. “It’s a big deal for us, and it’s a big deal for our students.”

SBC hopes to increase the amount of women in engineering, and the staff there believes the new accreditation status will greatly promote the program.

“Because of our accreditation, prospective students will know they are receiving a quality education when they choose to come to Sweet Briar,” Yochum said.

The college would like to see the program increase by 75 students, which would be over 10 percent of Sweet Briar’s population.

“We certainly hope that our accreditation will raise awareness for women about our small program,” he said.

The engineering program, which currently consists of 30 students, strives to empower and educate women, while challenging them in a supportive environment.

“As we have more students, we can offer more junior and senior level electives,” Pierce said. “This lets our students, who have different interests, veer off and follow a path.”

Although the new accreditation will serve in promotion of the school, the engineering department strives to gain exposure in other ways as well. Three events are held annually for high school girls. Through “Explore Engineering” the students are invited to design projects that have an emphasis on creativity, while staying with a college student mentor. Over 130 girls have experienced the program in the three years it has existed.

“Unfortunately, many young people simply aren’t aware of the creative work that engineers do to improve our quality of life,” Yochum said. “We are working hard to change this.”

The school offers a B.S. in Engineering Science and a B.A. in Engineering Management. Founded in 1901, the women’s college, located in Sweet Briar, Virginia, officially opened in 1906 with 51 students.

“While being a women’s college is distinctive, our small class sizes, especially for an engineering program, sets us apart,” Yochum said.

Pierce, who is in his fifth year of teaching at SBC, believes that being a women’s college is a huge plus for females studying engineering. Before coming to Sweet Briar, Pierce taught mechanical engineering at a larger school and says that his classes would have roughly 25 students, oftentimes only having one female.

“A lot of women are okay with that, and don’t mind that hurdle,” Pierce said. “But I think women face some challenges.”

He says at his former school, when he assigned a project in shop, the women would commonly stand to the side, letting the men handle the shop work.

“In our shop, there’s nothing but women,” Pierce said. “It’s hard enough to major in engineering without having to face the extra challenges of not being taken seriously by some of your fellow students.”

Now, Pierce believes that the all-women setting provides students with the opportunity to become leaders in their field, while also building confidence.

“They can learn a profession that is mostly male dominated in an environment where they don’t have to fight that while they’re learning,” he said.

In addition to an absence of men, Pierce agrees with Yochum that the small class size adds to the program in a positive way.

“My first priority is my teaching. I know how well every one of my students is doing,” he said, adding that an advantage to having a small number of students is the ability to know each woman’s strengths and weaknesses.

“We joke that we learn more about each other than we want to know,” Pierce said.

In such an intimate environment, the hope is that each student really gets the attention she needs, giving professors the opportunity to really mentor each student.

“Ask any professor who really loves teaching and it’s all about the students,” Pierce said.

After working in industry for many years, Pierce adds that working with the students is refreshing.

“Here, you’re around happy-go-lucky 20-year-olds all the time,” he laughed. “They’re just a fun bunch to be around.”

For more information, visit Sweet Briar’s website at www.sbc.edu.

“We think it’s a unique kind of program,” Roger Jones, chair of Leadership Studies, said.

For the past two years, Jones has been working to get the new program approved under the School of Education with the hopes of developing a doctoral program that provides a broader view of leadership.

“It seemed the most natural place to house it was the School of Education,” he said.

After some discussion with the school’s administration, Jones took the idea to the faculty.

“We identified about 20 to 25 faculty from the six schools on campus, invited them to lunch and talked to them about what an interdisciplinary program would look like,” he said.

They discussed the kinds of contributions each school could make, as well as what types of classes the program could involve that would fit under the broader spectrum of leadership.

“We hoped to challenge people’s attitudes about communities. We have to see ourselves as a part of a larger community and being concerned about everyone we come in contact with, and not just the people we work with on a daily basis,” Jones said.

Keeping the focus on building up innovative leaders, the program requires students who wish to apply to submit an essay focused on the kind of experience they want to have and what their future goals are in terms of leadership. This essay is an additional requirement to the usual application steps of taking the GRE and obtaining different letters of recommendation for the program.

Lynchburg College’s doctoral seminars are taught by 13 different faculty members on campus. The new leadership program features professors from a variety of disciplines including business, community and government. The classes include subjects such as human resource management, public policy, organizational communications and community dynamics.

The program’s primary focus is not on preparing professors who teach disciplines, but rather leaders who can go out and build bridges in their communities.

“We really want to focus on what could be rather than what is, and that’s kind of what we’re trying to get our students to think about—what could we accomplish?” he said.

After going through the program, students will be prepared for a number of different careers including leadership in government, agencies and nonprofits. Although the primary focus of the program will be on obtaining superintendent licensure, Jones said the program aims to equip students to be leaders no matter where they choose to work and that, hopefully, the student’s involvement will also elicit change in their communities as well as those organizations.

“One of the unique characteristics in this program is that we anticipate that most of the dissertations will result in a recommendation or change that will improve the organization in which [the students] work,” he said. “We don’t want students to write dissertations that will just sit on shelves. We would really like it to be focused on something that the student and the organization in which they work believe is an area of importance.”

The program is a cohort program and is not open to rolling admission, but Jones said as the program grows, he hopes it will be able to sustain itself and produce leaders who will build partnerships in their communities.

“What we really want to see is leaders who graduate from the program and assume a broader leadership role in the community by building partnerships and bridges and understanding and listening to other organizations and groups,” he said. “There has to be something that is a bigger picture that’s very important to the community that we can come together for.”

The program will include a minimum of 54 hours of coursework beyond the master’s and 12 hours of dissertation research, for a minimum of 66 hours total. For more information on Lynchburg College’s Doctorate in Leadership Studies program, visit www.lynchburg.edu/eddls.xml.

“If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.”

-Henry Ford

Financial literacy, while an often-used life skill, is one that doesn’t always get the most attention in public schools. This is surprising when considering the impact financial decisions make in people’s lives every day. The potential impact of bad decisions in the financial realm can negatively impact a student’s future for years. As a means to mitigate this, in 2009 the Virginia Board of Education mandated that every high school student would need to take a course in economics and personal finance. Genworth Financial, a Richmond, Virginia-based Fortune 500 insurance company with a large presence in Lynchburg, has partnered with EverFi, an award-winning Washington, D.C.-based educational technology company, to provide an exciting digital interface to entice students as they learn about financial concepts.

Last November, the Genworth Foundation announced a three-year commitment to strengthen financial education in more than 300 high schools across the Commonwealth of Virginia by introducing a six-hour online financial literacy course—Money, My Future^SM—designed by EverFi. The Genworth Foundation is the charitable arm of Genworth Financial and works to improve communities around the world.

“Financial literacy empowers people to make informed and responsible choices and is a building block for a secure financial future,” Leon E. Roday, chairman of the Genworth Foundation board of directors, said. “By adding private-sector expertise, resources and funds to the work being done by nonprofit organizations and community groups that specialize in financial education, we can significantly raise the quantity and quality of financial education in our schools.”

The financial program created by EverFi and utilized to teach personal finance and economics utilizes the latest in educational technologies, such as 3-D gaming, social networking and animation while incorporating Virginia’s state standards to appeal to today’s digitally savvy students.

According to Al Orendorff, media contact for Genworth, the incorporation of digital technologies to teach economics and personal finance “is innovative and one of the most extensive programs of its kind. It reaches young people in the digital world they live in. This is a new approach to an old subject for which young people have a natural affinity.”

Several schools across the state were introduced to the program last fall and students enrolled in the program spent over 34,000 hours on the site. A survey of participating students who took the course yielded the following results:

• 82 percent of the students participating in all nine of the course modules rated them “valuable” or “extremely valuable.”
• 70 percent of student respondents said that financial education was “extremely important” for their financial future.
• 74 percent of student respondents felt that all students should be required to take My Money, My Future.
• 45 percent of student respondents say they have had a conversation with their parents or an adult about personal finance since taking My Money, My Future.
• 86 percent of student respondents believed that using interactive, online technology courses similar to My Money, My Future is an effective way to teach students.
• Students were asked to rate their financial knowledge on a scale of 1 to 10 before and after taking My Money, My Future :
  • Before taking the course, more than 64 percent of student respondents rated their financial knowledge at a “4” or below.
  • After taking the course, more than 83 percent of student respondents rate their financial knowledge at a “7” or above.

The program requires some teacher training, but it is minimal. The teachers that took part in the program last fall felt that the program improved their students’ educational experience. Among teachers, 92 percent felt My Money, My Future enhanced the material they were teaching and 96 percent would like the curriculum offered to future students in their high school.

The program is currently being used across Virginia, including the Lynchburg area.

“The Genworth Foundation and EverFi are helping to support the program statewide because we believe that financial literacy is critical and finding innovative ways to address these issues is critical,” Orendorff said.

While the Virginia Board of Education created the mandate for students to complete the economic coursework before graduating in 2009, the mandate did not go into effect until 2011.  In implementing My Money, My Future, the Genworth Foundation will continue to work with the State Department of Education, local school districts and other nonprofits, including the Virginia Council on Economic Education, to provide teacher training and professional development at no cost to teachers or schools.

There is no question that understanding the basics of financial literacy and personal finance can aid students as they leave school and begin their adult lives. The state of Virginia believes in this enough to make it a mandate that all students are taught about personal finance and economics before they graduate. It is encouraging that not only does there exist a company in EverFi that is able to develop a program which appeals to the digitally capable students who now populate our schools, but that the Genworth Foundation is working with local communities and schools to offer this program free of charge. The hope is that this rising generation of students learn enough to become the financially savvy adults they will need to be to thrive in these difficult economic times.

Swipe K12 School Solutions, Inc., is based in Baltimore, Maryland. According to the company’s Web site, the “patent pending software is a real-time student accountability system that enables schools to maximize learning in the classroom.” This is accomplished through the utilization of student check-in stations. “Students check in when they first arrive to school by “swiping” ID cards at the school’s entrance,” the company’s Web site explains. “The swiping stations record the exact time of entry and print “Swipe Alerts” for students who have active alerts or messages. Each swipe station can log in dozens of students per minute for fast, efficient attendance data collection.”

Once the students have logged into the system, teachers have access to the attendance information though the use of a web portal. Swipe K12 works with the school’s attendance system to track student attendance and offers period by period accountability.  Should a student “cut” a class, it automatically shows up and is logged by teachers when they verify student attendance during each class. The program can also send out automated e-mails or text messages to parents, keeping them in the loop about their children’s attendance.

In addition to the tracking of student attendance, the program can also be used to disseminate information via “alerts.” For example, if a student has an unpaid library fee, an alert pops up as soon as the student “swipes” in upon his or her arrival at school.

“With Swipe, teachers are no longer taking attendance, they are verifying attendance,” Jon Amatruda, a sales and implementation representative for Swipe, said, adding that Swipe K12 is a “tool to address attendance issues quickly.”

The program has achieved success in several school systems. Ryan Imbraille, Assistant Principal of Perry Hall High School in Baltimore says “that the Swipe system has been a major success. …With over 2,400 students, we were initially concerned about the speed at which the system could process such a large volume of students.  To our amazement, it was as fast as the students could walk through the doors.”

For Nathaniel Gibson, Principal of Milford Mill High School in Baltimore, the result the system had on truancy was almost immediate.

“After installing the system, we experienced an 80 percent reduction in class cutting within two weeks,” he said. “Our hallways are much quieter and the building is safer.”

The initial trial with Swipe K12 in Appomattox was conducted during the last nine weeks of school during the 2010-2011 session. Brette Arbogast, Director of Technology and Career and Technology Education for Appomattox County Public Schools, initiated the program.

“One of the ‘hats’ I wear for the county involves revising our Crisis Management Plan,” he said. “In the course of working with that, I realized that our current way of tracking attendance, while serving the data collection needs required by the state, did little to offer a reliable way of tracking student locations in the event of an emergency.”

Arbogast then started to conduct research on various student tracking and security solutions.

“I kept coming back to Swipe [K12],” he said. “With the implementation of Swipe, we now have a reliable method for tracking student location from the moment they check in at school until the close of the last period. In addition, parents can be given real-time access to the location of their children at whatever level they want. From notification of student arrival only to finding out that a student has cut a class, the information is only an e-mail or text away.”

The other features of Swipe, such as the ability to track which students are skipping school or cutting class, is also invaluable, according to Arbogast.

“Our primary responsibility as educators is to teach our students.  Being able to have students responsible for checking in to school adds a layer of accountability that wasn’t there before,” he said.

When asked whether he considered Swipe too invasive, Arbogast says that the bigger concern of creating a secure environment overrides any worries of a “Big Brother” system looking over students’ shoulders.

“It all comes back to safety,” he said. “At any point in time, an administrator or teacher can log into Swipe and check on a student’s status. That provides peace of mind to us and to parents.”

So far, Arbogast says, teachers are pleased with the system.

“During our trial last year, the teachers had a chance to see what Swipe had to offer. We conducted a survey at the end of the year to see what they thought about it. The overwhelming majority of teachers liked what Swipe had to offer and were enthusiastic about what it could do,” he said.

Martha Eagle, the new principal at Appomattox County High School (ACHS) where the Swipe program will be utilized, is looking forward to having the Swipe system in place.

“We are very excited about the possibilities a full scale deployment will afford ACHS,” she said during a training session with the Swipe representative.

School emergencies, while fairly rare, can still occur and the peace of mind offered by products such as Swipe can be invaluable. The system exists to assist with keeping students safe, while also placing the responsibility of student attendance back into the hands of the students. Its ultimate goal is to keep students exactly where they should be—in class, getting an education.

There is an organization that exists to provide students with a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability when it comes to finances. That organization is Junior Achievement, or JA, which plays an active role in the supplemental financial education of students in Central Virginia.

JA is part of a worldwide program. Begun by Horace Moses, Theodore Vail and Senator Murray Crane of Massachusetts in 1919 as a collection of small business clubs in Springfield, Massachusetts, JA grew from these small beginnings and began to garner financial support from a number of organizations, including the Boy and Girl Scouts and the YMCA. The influence of the organization expanded regionally and, by 1925, President Calvin Coolidge created a national fund drive that expanded JA throughout many cities in Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

JA worked hard to support the war effort during World War Two and continued to expand through the next several decades, gaining nationwide attention and influence, including the creation of a three-day student conference of the National Association of Junior Achievement Companies in 1967, the National Business Hall of Fame in 1975 and an ever-expanding economic curriculum.

Today, JA reaches millions of students across the United States and the organization has expanded to 123 countries to reach a total of 9.7 million students every year, including thousands in the state of Virginia.

Daphne Swanson, Chief Operating Officer of JA of Central Virginia (JACV), says that though the Lynchburg office of JACV closed about a year and a half ago, she contends that the program is still very much alive there, and its programs made available through their Roanoke and Richmond offices. She sums up the mission of JACV simply.

“We want to empower kids for their own success in the local economy. Our three pillars say it all,” Swanson said.

Those three pillars are “to bring role models from our business community into the classroom to deliver educational programs about free enterprise, economics, and personal finance, enhanced by their own real world experiences.” JACV sets out to accomplish these tasks in a number of ways. One is by providing supplemental curriculum support through the use of civic leaders volunteering in the classroom in order to teach financial information.

According to JA’s Web site, these volunteers work “with age-appropriate curricula designed to teach elementary students about their roles as individuals, workers, and consumers and to prepare middle grade and high school students for key economic and workforce issues they will face. In addition to bringing the free enterprise system to life in the classroom, Junior Achievement of Central Virginia’s programs teach youngsters the importance of staying in school. We also offer programs for young people who may have difficulty graduating from high school.”

Swanson says this program is the fundamental core for Junior Achievement and the primary way that it works with students on a local level.

“The new Entrepreneurship Program has generated big enthusiasm, especially through our giveaway program. This program has kids in local classrooms generating ideas for a giveaway, which will take place at the last Richmond Raiders [indoor pro football] game of the season. This program has really gotten the students involved and has helped them feel connected,” Swanson explained.

Along with the expansive curriculum that reaches students from kindergarten through high school, JACV also offers a number of other programs, including one named  Business Rocks. Business Rocks is a partnership between Lynchburg’s Office of Economic Development and Linkhorne Middle School. Through it, business professionals speak with 8^th graders about their careers and the importance of education.  JACV and Lynchburg City Schools requested that this program be a part of the Economic Developments workforce initiatives.

The most recent JACV program—called the $1,000 Question Contest—encourages students from all over the state to get involved. The contest challenges students’ entrepreneurial spirits by asking them to create and submit a 30-second YouTube video demonstrating what business they would start with $1,000. The Grand Prize winner will receive $1,000 to put towards starting the business idea shown in their video.

“The deadline [to submit] has been extended into September, because we want the kids to be more involved. We would love as many submissions as possible,” Swanson said, emphasizing that students from Lynchburg and the surrounding areas are encouraged to enter.

As a nonprofit, JACV hosts several fundraisers each year, including a Bowl-A-Thon and its annual golf tournament in Richmond.

“In the past, they have done Bowl-A-Thons in Lynchburg, and we raise funds through those events,” Swanson said. “Bowl-A-Thons have been very successful for us. Typically, we raise about $100,000 locally through that.”

In addition to the Bowl-a-Thon, there are many ways to support Junior Achievement.  Some include cash, credit card and stock donations. Donors can also include making JA the beneficiary of life insurance policies, bequests and gifts of real estate.

Through its use of its volunteer-taught financial curriculum, JACV works diligently to provide students with the “reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability” that Henry Ford promoted. These programs are vital in providing students with the essential financial knowledge they need for the “real world” through the medium of community business partnerships. It has done so successfully and has grown from a group of localized business clubs in Springfield, Massachusetts, to a worldwide organization that positively impacts Central Virginia.

For Swanson, who has been with JACV for six years, the organization’s mission is one that hits home for her, both personally and professionally—a mission she is committed to infusing into local students.

“I’m a CPA myself and know the value of being financially solvent and financially literate,” she said. “I know that’s something I wanted to instill in my own child and I think every child should have that as well.”

For more information about Junior Achievement of Central Virginia, and for complete rules for the $1,000 Question Contest, visit www.jatoday.org.

It began with three goals. The first was to provide jobs for the community. The second goal was to provide inexpensive childcare to parents to allow them to work. The last goal was to provide recreation activities for African American youth. The center underwent several changes over the years and, by 1943, the WPA had withdrawn from the project and the center was reborn as the Bethune Nursery Center. Since that time, it has relocated and been renamed but still maintains its motto, originally stated by Mary Bethune, “Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.”

According to the school’s Web site, the mission statement of the school “is to provide quality child care in a nurturing and enriching early childhood learning environment that encourages accomplishment and strives for excellence for children during their formative years.” The school focuses on meeting their mission by providing an age appropriate curriculum with a dedicated staff. The school has the capacity to serve 92 students, but Esther Wood, the Executive Director of the school, tries to keep the number of active students at around 75 to provide a more quality environment and flexibility for parents’ childcare needs.

The school has three separate classrooms, divided by age groups: twos, threes, and four/fives, each of which is led by a teacher who crafts lesson plans which incorporate the following curriculum, posted on the school’s Web site:

“Manipulative or fine motor activities. Coloring, using scissors, creating crafts, building and construction (blocks), creating with play dough, working puzzles, and lacing activities are practiced on a daily basis.

Gross motor skills. Running, climbing, playing with balls, general creative outside play, exercising and a variety of games that encourage the use of the body and limbs are a part of Bethune’s curriculum.

Language development. A strong emphasis is placed on emergent literacy and language development. This is reinforced with field trips to the public library and visits to the Center by the city librarian for story time.

Socialization. Social skills are developed through learning to share, playing together, problem solving, and cooperating and assuming class responsibilities. Participation in field trips, resource and community visitors and safety programs act as building blocks to good citizenship.

Music and dramatic play. Opportunities in the areas of dramatic and creative play, housekeeping, pretend, transportation activities, story time, dress up, pictures, alphabets, differentiating between shapes and sizes, color identification, counting, self-expression, identifying seasons, days of the week, months and holidays help to develop the child’s basic knowledge, encourage conversation and enhance personality development.

Creative movement and spatial concepts are addressed using music and dance. Child directed free play is a favorite time for the children when they can select their own activities.”

In addition to the above curriculum, the school fosters a sense of respect for the natural world through the use of a “Sight and Sound Garden,” which consists of a butterfly garden and fishponds for the students to enjoy and explore.

The school takes great pride in their staff, which includes a director and executive assistant, three teachers and three teacher assistants, a transportation and maintenance director, a van attendant, a dietitian and a housekeeper. Turnover is low, and much of the current staff has been with MBA from five to 24 years.

So, it comes as no surprise that Wood says she is most proud of “our success and dedicated staff. They are committed to learn all about early childhood education.”

MBA also welcomes volunteers from local nonprofits, such as the Foster Grandparent Program and the Area Agency on Aging. Currently, the academy’s “Foster Grandparent” is 88 years old and has been volunteering at MBA for 26 years. Local colleges also offer volunteers who work to assist MBA’s teachers.

One of the things that sets the MBA apart from other early childcare schools in the area is the school’s bus, which features integrated safety seating for the children. This bus, according to Wood, lends itself to the MBA’s pursuit to “comprehensively meet family needs.”  It assists with the picking up and dropping off of students, saving the parent’s time and gas money. It is also used for field trips that help the students get a greater perspective on the world around them.

MBA is also a certified “Success By 6” school, a United Way initiative that helps maintain the school’s high curriculum standards. As a part of this program, the school utilizes Phonetics Awareness and Literacy Screening, or PALS, testing to evaluate the school’s programs.  PALS is a program created and maintained by the University of Virginia and utilized to promote early reading intervention. The implementation of these programs often leads to success for the students.  Woods says that local teachers who work with MBA children after they leave the academy often say to her that “they can tell the students that come from Bethune.”

Every child at MBA is given daily breakfast, lunch and a healthy snack that is coordinated by the school’s dietitian. The dietitian attends regular workshops by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to stay informed on safe food preparation and the MBA has been commended by the Campbell County Extension Office on the quality of its food preparation program.

Mary Bethune Academy has a long history of service to the people of Lynchburg. Its dedicated staff makes sure that the students who walk through the doors are given the best possible services and are committed to the prospect of creating children who have a lifelong love of learning.

On March 31, the school board unanimously voted to close Bedford Primary School in efforts to meet financial and educational goals, according to Superintendent Dr. Douglas Schuch. From an educational perspective, Schuch said the school zone in which Bedford Primary falls under is unique. The zone currently requires students to attend primary and elementary school before then moving to middle and high school.

“Requiring students to go to four schools before they graduate, instead of three like they do everywhere else, is just not in the best interest of student learning, in terms of continuity, instruction and in terms of engaging parents and family in the educational process,” Schuch said.

Another educational factor considered while making the final decision was the fact that Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) testing begins for students when they reach the third grade.

“In that attendance zone, the students would go from kindergarten, first and second [grades] at one school and then, in the year they are starting a new school and adjusting to everything a student has to adjust to in the first year, they enter into that high stakes testing,” Schuch said.

Closing Bedford Primary and moving those students to Bedford Elementary School allows students to be in a familiar location when they begin their SOL testing.

As for financial factors, by closing Bedford Primary, the board said they will save just over half a million dollars annually. According to Schuch, the attendance zone the school currently falls under has had five consecutive years of declining enrollment at the elementary level.

“As we looked at where the numbers are, we realized we can actually fit a [Kindergarten] through [5^th grade] model in [Bedford Elementary], which is a much newer school, a much larger facility and was designed to be a K through 5 facility in its outset,” Schuch said.

Schuch also said moving the students to Bedford Elementary allows them to remain in the same attendance zone because those students who go to Bedford Primary already feed into the elementary school.

“Really this is just bringing them together under one roof,” Schuch said. “I think there are a lot of good reasons educationally, financially and also responsibly, if you look at declining enrollment, to make this move.”

Despite these benefits, Schuch said he understands the upset parents who have been vocal about the board’s recent decision.

“Closing a school is closing a school and people are very upset about that and my heart really goes out them,” Schuch said. “I still believe it’s the right thing to do, and our board has spoken to that, too, but we really want to work with those families now to make the transition into next fall.”

Since the decision was made, many parents have spoken out against the move, citing possible overcrowding. Schuch said the board has done a thorough review of the layout of Bedford Elementary and will be making public a map of where the various new grade levels will be located when the move is put into action this fall.

“It is fair to say that school will be more crowded than it currently is,” Schuch said. “But to be fair, it’s a school now of roughly 400 students in a building that was designed for more than 600 students.”

Schuch went on to say that following the move, Bedford Elementary would be comparable in size and number of students to at least half of the other elementary schools in the attendance zone.

As for the ratio of students to teachers, Schuch said this has also been taken into consideration and the board has found, with the new addition of grade levels, they will be able to fund at 20.5 student/teacher ratio as opposed to the 21.5 student/teacher ratio the school currently operates under.

“It’s a myth out there that if the school has more students in it that the class sizes are bigger,” Schuch said. “We’re actually going to have more favorable class sizes next year than we even do this year.”

As for the teachers, Schuch said jobs will not be lost because of this transition. The board has a reduction-enforced policy where teachers are evaluated each year based on seniority and performance. They may request different changes in their position and those requests will be considered this year, as they are every year.

“My hope is that the majority of them would elect to go over to the Bedford Elementary School to help in that transition and in the continuity,” Schuch said. “But certainly, as with all of our employees, we want people to be where they want to be and where they can be passionate and influencing students in the best way possible.

Schuch said it is the board’s mission to prepare students to be productive and responsible citizens in the community and in the world. He believes that although this decision to close Bedford Primary is not popular, it will ultimately bring them closer to achieving that goal.

“Our enrollment had dropped at such a rate that we could no longer sustain the school from donations alone,” Turner Perrow, VSA’s Board President, said. “VSA has always survived through a combination of donations and tuition. As generous as our community has been over the years, the need financially has just become too great at this time to sustain keeping the school open.”

With 15 students currently enrolled and seven set to graduate in May, Leslie Kozera, VSA’s Director of Operations, Admissions and Student Life, says the decision to shut down the school is angering to her.

“I will be honest, I was not part of the decision to close the doors, because they knew I would fight against it,” Kozera said.

As a Director for the school, Kozera sits on the board for VSA, but does not have voting rights. Because of this, she says that she was forced out of the decision to close by a board she claims didn’t make enough effort to raise the money needed to save it.

“The board, like on any board of any nonprofit, it is their job to raise funds and they decided that [the funds needed] should come strictly from tuition,” she said. “With a nonprofit, you have to constantly be out there with your hand out. And they just weren’t.”

Perrow, however, says that was not the case. With only 15 students currently enrolled, even with a $22,000 annual tuition, Perrow says the numbers didn’t add up—and hadn’t been adding up for quite some time prior to the board’s decision. He says that there have been multiple attempts to raise more funds and sell off assets—including the sale of the 37,000-square-foot facility at 2244 Rivermont Avenue for $500,000 last summer for one-third of its city assessed worth of $1.57 million—but Perrow says that money went to pay down debt and cover operating costs.

Even the remaining few weeks of classes at VSA are in financial jeopardy, with $175,000 still needed to cover operating costs through May. But Perrow says the board’s commitment to making sure the current graduating students are taken care of trumps all other needs right now.

“We really have two tasks before us: First, we want our students to be completely unaffected by closing the school and we want them to receive an excellent education for the remainder of the year,” Perrow said. “We also want to help graduating students to transition to the next phase of their dance career and non-graduating students to transition into other dance programs.”

But Kozera says that other schools like VSA are “double the tuition,” and that her remaining students—many of whom call her “mom”—are heartbroken over the board’s decision to close after graduation.

“I’ve got kids whose parents are holding out for the possibility that we can pull through, because they don’t want to leave Lynchburg,” she said. They love what they are doing and now they have to start over somewhere else. And it’s nauseating.”

Kozera says her frustration over the board’s decision is based on her claims that its members shirked their responsibility to rally the necessary donors and the community at large to help keep the doors open.

“If they had gone public first, and if it doesn’t work, then okay. But now that they’ve announced it is closing, why would people give money? [The board] didn’t give the community the opportunity to reach out and help. I have people calling me and asking, ‘Why didn’t you let us know you were in trouble?’ Now it’s too late,” she said.

Acknowledging the negative reaction from VSA’s former staff and supporters, Perrow says that efforts were made to solicit donations, and says the board delayed the closure as long as possible.

“Quite simply, the Lynchburg community is not going to give a half-million dollars in operation costs per year. They are very supportive and are wonderful about making $10,000 and even $20,000 donations, but this community can only support so many of those donations at that level, and it’s certainly not enough to cover our operating costs,” he said. “We could continue to keep the school open and run it into the ground and into bankruptcy, but we are choosing to do the responsible thing and close now, before it gets to that point.”

For now, the long-term hopes for VSA appear to be tied up in its remaining assets. Marty Donovan, a current VSA board member and agent for Blickenstaff and Company Realtors, is listing VSA’s remaining school building on Rivermont Avenue for $425,000. Coupled with a small endowment and the opportunity to sell a WiMAX (4G) license the school owns, which Perrow estimates to be worth about $500,000, the board hopes to utilize these assets for future support of the local Arts.

“Those funds could possibly do a couple of things; they could be scholarships for students, they could sponsor professional dance/ballet performances in the area,” Perrow said. “We may also use it—especially if we generate enough through assets—to work with a MAGNET school or a similar program if there is an appetite to do that. That’s been successful in other areas and that could be the future of VSA.”

With sadness and differing viewpoints on both sides of the school’s closure, both Perrow and Kozera do agree that for these last few weeks in VSA’s history, the main focus must now be on its remaining students.

“Our number one priority is the well-being and welfare of the students,” Perrow said.

“I love them and I wish there was something I could do,” Kozera concluded. “Graduation this year is going to be brutal for all of us.”

An Opportunity to Help

The Virginia School of the Arts is holding its final fundraiser, called “An Evening of Elegance,” on Memorial Day weekend, May 27 & 28 at 7 p.m., at the Academy of Fine Arts Warehouse Theater in Lynchburg. Tickets are $20. Group rates for more than five people are available. Limited seating. All proceeds benefit the school. To reserve tickets, call (434) 847-8688.