Deputy school superintendant Patricia Willis wrote in a letter to the editor; we must ensure that all of our students have an equal opportunity to learn and achieve, regardless of which schools they attend or where they reside. Later she also wrote about all the resources and access to electives that the turn around schools have. Well I think she must have forgotten one Westside school, and if they have forgotten one, the powers-that-be are bound to have forgotten others as well.
At Ed White hundreds of students lanquished in the auditorium for weeks before being passed from substitute to substitute as the school scrambled to hire several new reading teachers (after seven weeks they hired two but both lasted just a few days), gutting several elective classes in the process (so much for acess to a wide range electives). These studnets have lost eight weeks of academic insruction and counting. I wonder if Stanton and Paxon had an auditorium filled with kids recieveing no instruction, or numerous classes manned by substitutes?
Furthermore, disproving the district and Pat Willis’s claim that education wherever a student is, is a priority, is the fact that students in many of the other reading classes don’t have the books and the materials they need or are just recieving them now after eight weeks. How does the district expect teachers to teach and students to learn without the materials they need and just who do you think they are going to blame if the fine teachers at Ed White don’t meet this year’s arbitrary number for gains? You would think that at a school where only about a third of the kids read at grade level reading teachers and the books kids need would be a priority. Mrs. Willis are the kids on the westside not a priority?
We have serious problems in the county which are either exacerbated or ignored when those we have chosen to lead us out of them paint a rosy picture. Well friends this rose has lots of sharp thorns and children are paying the price.
Chris Guerrieri
I am very sorry about your lack of reading teachers..so, I'm guessing they are 9th and 10th grade and will be some key players in leading your school to an A, now that we have all the oversight! Of course many schools unleashed a new reading program and that has come without a lot of the needed training and the county only bought parts of the materials (a.k.a.books)...how funny is that? I'm thinking that I want to be like those new hires that only lasted a few days...Increasingly, 50% of my work load is satisfying some state paper trail that does absolutely nothing to educate the kids! I mean, do we really need one-on-one data chats on 18 different forms so that the kids have their "aha moment" and take responsibility for their learning? I think not! ...so back to the new hires that are now the has-beens...I've served our county for a lot of years..I still have a zeal for the young people and I love my discipline and I love teaching but I'll never be any good as a cookie-cutter, so maybe it's time to find a new bakery!!!
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