My name is Ryan Deal.  I am currently a freshman at the Legal Studies Academy at First Colonial High School and I am an alumni of Kemps Landing Magnet School for the Talented and Gifted, both of which are located in Virginia Beach.  The city of Virginia Beach has a large school system.  There are eleven high schools, each with around 2200 students and twelve middle schools with around 1700, the exception being Kemps Landing. Kemps Landing is a full-time gifted school of around 600 students in grades 6-8.  Only advanced classes are taught and students are essentially forced to achieve.  For instance, all sixth graders must take Latin I.  As a student who came into school in seventh grade, I did not take the class, but students who have taken it tell me that it has helped them not only in future languages but also in English.  An average student left Kemps Landing with the following high school credits: 3 language credits, 2 math credits, 1 science credit, and potential credits from electives.  In addition, some students chose to take classes over the summer.  A fellow freshman, now at Princess Anne High School's International Baccalaureate program went into her freshman year with 9 high school credits (with six credits required of high school students per year). 

This program caused great personal benefits for me.  For one thing, I have five high school credits, which is almost equivalent to a year of studies at a high school.  Another benefit from this program was the smaller environment better suited for gifted learners.  Asking a teacher a question was never an issue, because other students were probably thinking of the same question.  The teachers are educated in how gifted students operate, so they can handle nuances such as procrastination that are common in gifted students.  The high number of students who want to achieve leads to a surge in students trying out for academy programs, another Virginia Beach feature where a limited number of students are selected to attend "schools within schools" that centralize on specific areas of study.  An example is the Legal Studies Academy at First Colonial High School, or the Math and Sciences Academy at Ocean Lakes High School.

I have spent so much time speaking about this program because it shows how cities can effectively govern their own affairs with gifted students.  Local issues should not be decided by state law.  For example, in a smaller township, there may not be enough students to make a school like Kemps Landing cost effective.  Likewise, one of the proposed ideas (assessment of each student's academic growth) would take up a ridiculous amount of time and resources in a school division such as Virginia Beach City Public Schools.

This is not to say that my middle school was perfect. There were several key issues that could be resolved via student input and spending this money as cities saw fit, instead of imposing bureaucratic nightmares onto larger cities. Virginia is a diverse state. Gifted students in Staunton have different needs than students in Chesapeake. We should treat them as their situations deem needed. Thank you for reading.