LoudounNow LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
[ Vol. 2, No. 40 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ Aug. 17 – 23, 2017 ]
18 School Board Has Another Tool to Expand Full-Day Kindergarten BY DANIELLE NADLER
Danielle Nadler/Loudoun Now
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring gathers with other Loudouners for a prayer vigil in Ashburn Monday. The county held two peaceful vigils in response to the violence that erupted ahead of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
After Charlottesville, Loudouners Stand Vigil BY RENSS GREENE AND DANIELLE NADLER
A
fter the violence, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis that came to Charlottesville this past weekend, Loudouners gathered at peaceful vigils to pray and denounce that hatred. On Sunday, the day after the protests, demonstrations, violence, and death ahead of a planned “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, dozens of people gathered on the steps of the old courthouse in Leesburg. At that vigil, Loudoun County Democratic Committee Vice Chairman Randy Ihara, who organized the rally, told stories of being harassed and threatened by the KKK as a labor organizer in the ’60s, and said, “we can’t allow this sort of thing to happen again.” “I’ve seen this happen, and I’ve been on the wrong end of
those guns, and we’ve got to stop that from happening,” Ihara told the vigil crowd. “Martin Luther King said the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice, and the reason he said that was because of people like you.” The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville was planned for noon, but by 11:30 a.m., violent clashes between swastika- and Confederate flag-bearing protestors and counter-protestors prompted officials to declare a state of emergency, later declaring the rally an illegal assembly. One woman was killed and 19 other people injured when a car from Ohio plowed into a crowd of counter-protestors. Police have charged the 20-year-old driver with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and one count of hit-and-run. Later that day, a State Police helicopter VIGIL >> 47
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Small adjustments to attendance zone boundaries may be the cheapest and easiest way to free up classroom space for full-day kindergarten. That was the sentiment of School Board members who backed a new boundaries policy last week. How to provide every Loudoun kindergartener with a full, six-hour school day has been a years-long debate. Under the leadership of the previous superintendent, it seemed the only solution was to build classroom additions, a multi-million-dollar option. Since Superintendent Eric Williams was hired in 2014, he has agreed that classroom additions may be the best option for some schools, but has suggested the board consider “slight, targeted” attendance boundary adjustments to deliver the program to others. Following his recommendation, the board voted 6-2-0-1 Aug. 8 to adopt a policy change that allows for an expedited process for boundary changes under specific circumstances. Those include converting a traditional school to a charter school, addressing a new housing development that would otherwise cause overcrowding at a school, and reassigning 15 percent or less of a school’s students if it would allow for at least one full-day kindergarten classroom without overcrowding that school. That last one has been the sticking point that’s divided the School Board on the issue. Williams and his team of planners have asked for the flexibility to recommend that the board undergo an expedited boundary process when reassigning 15 percent or less of a school’s students would free up space for full-day kinderKINDERGARTEN >> 47
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