Dear HCPS Families,
We are pleased to work with HCPS in your exciting first year of the balanced calendar initiative. As Mr. Davis has shared, we are the team of five doctoral students in VCU's Education Leadership program tasked with creating an evaluation plan for HCPS’s balanced calendar initiative.
As you play a significant part in the district’s initiative, we would like to have your participation in a focus group for about an hour sometime between 12/13-12/16. Your insights will help us create a comprehensive evaluation plan for the balanced calendar initiative. We would like to hear what you believe is the essential information that HCS should collect to determine if the balanced calendar initiative is successful. In addition, we would like to know what information you would like to receive about the effectiveness of the balanced calendar in meeting its goals as well as how you would like to receive that information.
If you choose to participate, the focus group will last under an hour and will be conducted by our team members through Zoom. If there is a strong preference for an in-person focus group, this can be arranged. Of course, your participation is voluntary. In May we will share our capstone findings and an evaluation plan deliverable with the division. While our capstone report is public, we will destroy the focus group material after we submit the study. Names will only be used with permission in our analysis and findings.
We are scheduling focus groups during the week of December 13. We will make ourselves available to fit your schedule. Should you have any questions, please feel free to call 804-397-5333 or reach out via email to [email protected].
Please complete this form or write [email protected] with your availability for a focus group between December 3- December 9, 2021.
Thank you for considering our request.
Sincerely,
Max Smith, Margot Zahner, Jeffrey Elmore, Ellen Burnett and Joy Blosser
VCU HCPS Capstone 2022 Team