As a gifted education specialist in the Charlottesville City Schools, I am concerned about several of the proposed revisions to the Regulations Governing Educational Services for Gifted Students. Following are three areas of concern.
1.    Current regulations call for a five-year Local Plan for the Education of the Gifted while the proposed regulations call for annual plans. Educators and community members invest a significant amount of time and effort in the development of these five-year plans. A five-year plan allows a school division to develop long-term goals, implement changes, and evaluate progress before updating its plan. I do not believe plans developed on an annual basis would be as comprehensive or as beneficial to the education of our gifted students as the five-year plans.
2.    Current regulations require Department of Education approval and a peer review of local plans. The proposed change only requires local school board approval. As specialists in gifted education study local plans across the state, productive insights emerge. The present system of peer review is a teaching and learning process for school divisions. By having the local plans submitted to the Department of Education for approval, compliance to identification and programming requirements is ensured across the state. In addition, school board members are not experts in the field of gifted education and may not be able to provide meaningful feedback on the gifted program plans.
3.    Current regulations assure that available funds are to “be used to support only those activities identified in the school division’s plan.”  This section is being removed in the proposed revisions. The absence of this regulatory language protecting the funding for gifted program services may allow school divisions to reduce monetary support for gifted education. I support the reinstatement of the gifted funding segment which states that funding administered by the Department of Education for the education of gifted students be used only to support those activities identified in the school division’s plan as approved by the Board of Education.