Kate Acuff

I ran for the School Board because I believe public education is the most important investment local government makes, certainly for students and their families, but also for the economic well-being of the entire community. I ran for re-election last year to focus on student achievement, advocate for greater investment in school capital, and reassess our strategic plan. 

We have a wonderfully diverse and talented community and school division devoted to promoting student achievement. We don’t always agree on what needs to be done, but in my three terms on the School Board, we have genuinely engaged in those debates, respected differing views from colleagues and the community, and have worked together well. 

Supporting the conditions in which our students can thrive is my lofty goal, which is sometimes difficult to achieve. This includes hiring and supporting our teachers and educational support staff, but it also includes listening to families and the larger community. I always focus on what is good for the school division and the community.

Some of the more difficult decisions are when the situation of a family or group must be balanced against the benefit of the division. One example is a recent redistricting process in which parents passionately made their case for their students, but redrawing district lines was essential to provide relief from serious overcrowding. These decisions are never easy, but the School Board represents about 14,000 students and must look at the bigger picture.

My top priorities for ACPS are raising achievement scores and making the case to the Board of Supervisors and Albemarle County community that investing in capital improvements to renovate aging schools and reduce overcrowding is essential.

• Achievement Scores: This is an ongoing priority of our strategic plan and, although we are making progress, we’d all like to see this improvement accelerate. We have adopted new literacy, math, and science curricula in the past three years, enhanced our quarterly assessments to provide teachers with timely feedback, added reading interventionists, raised the salaries of special education assistants, and provided more mental health supports. We are also piloting Communities in Schools in five of our schools to focus on attendance and family engagement. We may need to do even more. We know that not all our students come to us equally positioned to learn. Some of our students are up to 18 months behind on the first day of kindergarten, almost 30% of our students are low-income, some are housing insecure, and some of our populations continue to need additional supports.
• Capital Investment: Nearly half of our students are in schools that are overcapacity or close to it. We have 32 high school classrooms in trailers. The good news is we have the first two new school facilities in 25 years under construction now and another scheduled to open in the 2029-30 school year. Additionally, many of our schools are old and need substantial renovations. The School Board recently prioritized a new traditional high school, renovations at Stony Point Elementary, Albemarle High School and Western Albemarle High School, and a preschool center as its top five capital priorities.

It is essential that ACPS makes real progress in raising the achievement scores of our students, reduce gaps, and we need a viable plan to address our continuing capital needs. We are in Year 4 of the School Board’s five-year strategic plan, and we must decide to reaffirm it, revise it, or replace it. I am also looking forward to ACE Academy – Lambs Lane Campus being a great success in engaging high school students across the county.