School starts Wednesday

Toss a pop-tart in the toaster and pack the Hello Kitty lunchbox; the “big yellow cheese” will be rolling through Orange County Wednesday, Aug. 19 as schools officially open for the 2009-10 school year.
According to Pam Shifflett, executive administrative assistant to the superintendent, 5,334 students will be hitting the books at Orange County Public Schools this year. This is an increase from the end of last school year when there were 5,102 students enrolled.
This year, according to Shifflett, Gordon-Barbour Elementary will have 412 students enrolled, Orange Elementary will have 580, Lightfoot Elementary will have 314, Unionville Elementary will have 304, Prospect Heights Middle School will have 502 enrolled, Orange County High School will have 1,592 enrolled and there will be 134 students enrolled in Head Start.
Additionally, Locust Grove Elementary School, which educates students in kindergarten through fourth grade, will be seeing the most students at the elementary level with 655 enrolled. Locust Grove Middle School, educating students in fifth through eighth grade, will also see an influx of students with 841 enrolled. These large enrollment numbers will decrease next fall when the new middle school on Flat Run Road opens near the intersection of Rt. 601 and 20. The new school, designed to house 1,200 students, will allow for the current Locust Grove Elementary School population to be split into two schools, with kindergarten through second grade staying at the current elementary school and third through fifth grade moving to the current Locust Grove Middle School.
As for this year, director of elementary instruction Chuck Winkler said students shouldn’t expect any major changes. However, he said the staff has been hard at work all summer making improvements to the curriculum.
“We’ve done lots of curriculum work over the summer,“ he said. “We revamped the language arts program and reworked the benchmark requirements. We [also] made our core content more in line with the Virginia Standards of Learning.“
According to Winkler, the staff is still working on revising the policies, which he said will continue throughout the year. He also said that the grading policy is being reviewed, which hasn’t been updated since 2002.
Currently, Unionville, Lightfoot, Gordon-Barbour and Orange Elementary Schools are flagged under the No Child Left Behind Act.
These schools are Title I schools, meaning they receive federal funds to help children in high-poverty areas who are behind academically or at risk of falling behind. Because they have not met adequate yearly progress (AYP) benchmarks for two consecutive years in the same subject area, they are identified for improvement.
As such, these schools must offer students the opportunity to transfer to a school within the division that is not identified for improvement. In order to exit this “school choice” designation, these schools must meet AYP benchmarks for two consecutive years.
The Virginia Department of Education is expected to make their first AYP report for this year Aug. 13. For more information on school choice, contact Winkler at 661-4550.
According to administrative assistant Laura Byram, 773 staff members will be working in the schools this year, 396 of which are teachers. Last year, there were 815 staff members at the beginning of the school year with approximately 402 of them as teachers. However, due to budget restraints, at least 56 positions were eliminated during the year. According to Byram, at the end of last year there were 388 teachers employed with the county.
But school can’t start without bus drivers. According to the published bus routes for this year, there are 50 drivers with scheduled routes, 35 of which have been assigned to multiple routes with some operating both an elementary school route and a secondary route. To access the bus routes, visit http://www.ocss-va.info/public/transport_busroutes_search.aspx. They are searchable by either address or school.
To prepare for the start of school, open houses will be held prior to opening day, many of which are scheduled for Monday, Aug. 17. To determine the exact date and time for a particular school, contact the school’s main office by phone or visit http://www.ocss-va.org.