A fresh beginning for Vrginia Beach alternative education

A ground-breaking ceremony was held Wednesday for a new sixth- through 12th-grade alternative education building in Virginia Beach. (delores johnson | the virginian-pilot)

By Lauren Roth
The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH

This week, students wielding golden shovels turned piles of dirt for a new school. Unlike other projects, this building holds the expectations for the future of alternative education in Virginia Beach public schools.

The Renaissance Academy will rise in the next three years at the corner of Witchduck Road and Cleveland Street, the site of the city’s defunct all-black high school. Beginning in 2010, nearly every middle and high school student who falters in a regular school could be sent here.

The 285,000-square-foot building is intended to consolidate and update about five alternative programs, now housed in outdated school buildings, trailers and a former department store.

The school is expected to house, in one divided building, at least 1,600 pregnant teens, students with discipline problems, emotionally disturbed students, and sixth- to 12th-graders who have fallen behind academically.

With a $56.2 million construction budget, the Renaissance Academy is designed to be environmentally friendly, with grass and solar panels on the roof and natural light inside.

Educators hope that with the new building, they’ll get a fresh approach to alternative schooling.

“We’re pushing for a student-centered, engaging curriculum,” said Superintendent Jim Merrill.

The idea was floated at least six years ago by former Superintendent Tim Jenney, and many School Board members became early supporters.

The school will be built with the flexibility to hold programs of various sizes running at different hours. It also will offer distance-learning labs for advanced courses and several vocational programs.

Connar Armenta, an eighth-grader at Center for Effective Learning, the school division’s alternative middle school, wants high school and middle school students separated to prevent bullying, such as stuffing younger students into trash cans.

With adequate surveillance, however, he thinks the middle schoolers should be safe.

The building’s planners promise a central wall – essential to the school’s success, experts say – to divide middle and high school students. The two sides would each be split into wings, including one for a new program aimed at academically floundering middle school students.

Effective alternative schools create “a small setting with lots of interaction,” said Bonnie Todis, a senior fellow at the Teaching Research Institute at Western Oregon University. Students “end up in alternative education because they haven’t gotten a personal connection in the big high school.”

Part of that, she said, is anticipating the needs of students.

Todis, who co-wrote a summary of national studies on alternative education in January, said alternative schools need to offer day care for parenting students.

“That’s a deal-breaker,” she said. “If you want the kids there, you have to appreciate what’s going on with their lives.”

Many things could still change, said Jerry Deviney, a former Beach assistant superintendent who is coordinating the Renaissance Academy project.

Jane Dearborn, a teacher at Virginia Beach Central Academy, said a new building could improve morale. Central Academy, which has few windows and no gymnasium, serves high school students who have been kicked out of their regular school for behavioral reasons.

“They just feel like, 'Look where they stuck us.’ Maybe it’ll help them feel like the system hasn’t forgotten about them,” she said.

One of her students, Brandi Hill, 17, said many of her classmates think they’re failures. “No, your life’s not ruined. This is not the end for you,” she said. “There is another chance.”

Lauren Roth, (757) 222-5133,

lauren.roth@pilotonline.com