It’s unfortunate but you really have to take any message from 1701 Prudential drive, the school board building, and read between the lines. Patricia Willis’s letter about needy schools is no different.
In her very first paragraph she talks about allowing any student to achieve regardless of the school they attend. Well quite frankly this isn’t the case as kids at some schools have big advantages over kids at other schools. The four dedicated magnet schools play by different rules than the neighborhood schools do. Not only do you get in them through a lottery, which means some students are prohibbitted from going to them, but they have curriculums that the children who go there specifically applied for, thus greatly increasing their buy in, and children who misbehave or don’t maintain a 2.0 grade point average don’t last long. On the other hand neighborhood schools are required to educate whatever child shows up, regardless of desire, ability or behavior and often don’t have the curriculum choices that many children would like.
Mrs. Willis is correct when she writes that turn around schools often receive extra resources though at the same time they are perhaps missing out on perhaps the most important resource possible and that’s people. Opportunity scholarships and magnet schools have siphoned away many of the most involved families as well as students who would serve as leaders and examples for other students.
Then her message gets a little convoluted. One might think when she wrote, schools are able to provide additional professional development days at the start of the school year; before and after school tutoring; Saturday school; reading, math and instructional coaches; volunteer liaisons; and business and faith-based partners, that those things are just reserved for the turn around schools. In actuality all schools take advantage of many of those things and as far as I can tell the struggling schools don’t receive a lions share of those resources.
She then further muddies the waters when she says, a wide range of electives and specialized courses is available throughout the district. Where this is true on the district level, though the arts are often the first thing to be cut, it isn’t necessarily true at turn around schools. Due to curriculum requirements many of the students at the struggling schools are required to take remedial classes like read 180 and intensive math and these take the place of many electives. At my school the state recently required us to hire four new reading teachers. The teachers cut were all elective positions including an art teacher who had been there for fifteen years.
What she wrote next may have been accurate though at the same time I found it confusing. She writes that; Beginning this 2010-2011 school year, the district has implemented a process that will ensure accessibility to acceleration programs in all high schools throughout the district. If this is the case then why do we have academic magnet schools? What's the point of having specialized magnet schools if the students can get the same programs every where? Can it be because the district wants to have schools that have advantages over others?
She finished by talking about how the district remains, committed to our vision that every student will graduate from Duval County public schools with the knowledge and skills to be successful in post-secondary education and/or the workforce. It would have been more honest if she wrote, the district is committed to the same failed policies that have led us to the abyss. After all friends, in her letter she was basically saying everything is fine. Ask yourself, do you think everything is fine?
The letter writer that Mrs. Willis seeks to debunk was wrong in implying that children at the turn around schools don’t have much in the ways of resources, though Mrs. Willis was wrong or misleading on a few points as well. The truth is the turn around schools have some of the greatest resources the district offers and that’s a cadre of dedicated teachers who show up day in and day out facing many trials and tribulations. They often succeed in making a difference in the lives of their children despite the many obstacles that are put in their way.
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