City School Board again considers sister city exchange

More than a year after the idea was shelved, the Charlottesville School Board is again considering the merits of a student exchange program with Poggio a Caiano, one of Charlottesville’s sister cities.

The board, which has been invited by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission to visit the Italian city in September, discussed the rationale for having such a program at its meeting Thursday.

Though no vote was taken, the seven-member body came to a consensus that two staff members — a teacher and an administrator — should be sent abroad this fall to flesh out the idea and that their trips should be funded with public money. The cost would amount to around $3,000.

“I don’t think anyone can tell us as a board that we didn’t air this out publicly,” board member Llezelle Dugger said. As for a teacher paying his or her own way, Dugger said, “They just can’t.”

At least one board member would attend as well, though it was unclear whether that person’s voyage would also be backed with taxpayer money. Schools Superintendent Rosa S. Atkins suggested that should a board member go to Italy, costs could be saved by not sending them to the annual National School Board Association conference.

Board Chairman Ned Michie was skeptical of funding board members’ trips with public dollars. But he said that if members were to fund their trips individually, “the more the better.”

This exchange program would be for middle school students both in Charlottesville and Poggio a Caiano, in Tuscany.

The last time officials went to the Italian sister city was in 2007 — Atkins, then-Mayor David Brown and board member Alvin Edwards participated — and an exchange program was discussed at that time, though the plans never came to fruition. The trip was controversial because public money was used for some expenses, and there was an outcry from residents that the trip went through a closed-door planning process.

Jeanne Cox, the clerk of City Council who also sits on the Sister Cities Commis-sion, said in an interview that there are several people traveling to Poggio a Caiano in September during an annual three-day festival. Partici-pants include Cox and Mayor Dave Norris, who was invited as a guest of Pro Loco, an Italian tourism organization, along with Albemarle County Supervisor Sally H. Thomas, former mayors Nancy O’Brien and Francis Fife, and other area residents.

Cox said the group is not an official delegation in that the members are all traveling separately and paying out of their own pockets, but there are likely to be some official events given the composition of the group. Cox, the only member of the Sister Cities Commission who has agreed to take the trip, said that all the participants will meet in Poggio a Caiano during the festival, which runs from Sept. 18 to 20.

“It’s sort of semi-official,” Cox said of the trip. Though there will probably be formal gathering of public officials, Cox said, “we’re all sort of going for our own reasons.”

School Board members on Thursday discussed various benefits of having an exchange program for Charlottesville students — including making them more competitive for college and the job market, improving their world language skills, expanding their global view and developing independence and maturity. Several details need to be ironed out — such as which students would be chosen and how the trips would be paid for — but board members agreed that such a program would be worth pursuing.

“It is worth to make that kind of investment,” Edwards said.

Should School Board members choose to attend, Cox said it was likely that the exchange program would be discussed.

“It’s really something [Poggio a Caiano officials] want to have,” Michie said.