Alexandria Schools Begin School Year With Incoming Interim Superintendent

ALEXANDRIA, VA — The school year has started for Alexandria City Public Schools as schools welcomed students Monday for the first day.

Melanie Kay-Wyatt, the ACPS human resources chief who will become interim superintendent on Sept. 1, visited schools Monday along with School Board Chair Meagan Alderton and other school leaders. Kay-Wyatt will temporarily replace Superintendent Gregory Hutchings, Jr. who announced his resignation effective Aug. 31, as the School Board searches for a permanent superintendent.

Kay-Wyatt is collaborating with the departing Hutchings on her transition into the interim superintendent role.

"As our new interim superintendent, I am excited to welcome our students, families and staff as new opportunities for learning await us all," said Kay-Wyatt in a video message. "I am grateful for this opportunity to serve Alexandria City in this new role and to the School Board for having the confidence in me to lead in this critical time of transition."

This will be the second year ACPS is back for full in-person learning after the switch to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We have so excited to have the first day of school," said Wendy Gonzales, chief of teaching, learning and leadership at ACPS. "We are so excited just for this year to have it hopefully back to what we're all accustomed to with the ability to still pivot as we need to. If anything, we feel more empowered to handle this year with whatever it throws at us."

Gonzales told Patch ACPS is addressing "interrupted learning" during the COVID-19 pandemic using data to identify where there are gaps. This year, ACPS is focused on literacy, numeracy and some of the science standards, according to Gonzales.

"We have a lot of our interventionists, we have instructional coaches and our teachers work hard in professional learning communities where they're collaborating, and they're identifying where some of the gaps are in our learning so we can pull [students] in small groups, provide the extra remediation, provide extra after-school time," said Gonzales. "All of that is coordinated based on the data where we see the gaps in their learning."

Additionally, Kay-Wyatt said all students will participate in 30 minutes of social, emotional and academic learning each day.

On the safety and security side, new or continuing policies are present this school year. One new policy will be an ID requirement for students at middle and high schools. Students will have to have their student identification every day so administration and security officers can ensure only students are accessing campus during the school day. ACPS staff are already required to display their ID badge in schools, the ACPS central office and other ACPS properties. Staggered dismissals and supervised lunch blocks are continuing policies at the high school from last year.

At all schools, students, staff and visitors are using designated entrances for better control access.

"We have in place a lot of precautions and processes that we have, especially at the high school where students are now wearing their IDs, which is new," Gonzales told Patch. "We are double checking at every door, we're keeping more security around our different doors at our different schools and accounting for all our children all day long."

After last year's debate about school resource officers in schools, the school resource officer program will also return at the high school and middle school campuses, according to WTOP. A School Law Enforcement Partnership advisory group was created to examine the ACPS partnership with the Alexandria Police Department and will meet next on Sept. 12.

Gonzales reminds families to complete their Back to School Packet by and free or reduced-price meals application by the end of September. For the past few years, a federal pandemic program provided free meals to students regardless of eligibility, so families did not need to apply. That program ended after the last school year, so eligible families would need to apply for this school year.

All students who attend a Community Eligibility Provision school will receive free breakfast and lunch this school year, so families at those schools do not need to apply. Community Eligibility Provision schools include Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology, Jefferson-Houston PreK-8 IB School, Ferdinand T. Day Elementary School, John Adams Elementary School/Early Childhood Center, Francis C. Hammond Middle School, Patrick Henry K-8 School, James K. Polk Elementary and William Ramsay Elementary.

Families can also become familiar with the new ParentSquare, a multilingual platform for families to communications. A spokesperson for ACPS said the platform allows a family to send a message in their preferred language and the teacher to receive it in another.

"It provides all families easy access to new messaging from your children's schools, teachers and the division in one place and in a format everyone can understand," said Kay-Wyatt.

Monday was the first day of school for all ACPS schools, except Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School, which started earlier under its modified schedule.

The Alexandria School Board will hold its next meeting on Aug. 25. The work session will include a presentation on areas of focus, including student social-emotional indicators, Standard of Learning test results, chronic absenteeism rates and preliminary school accreditation statuses.

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