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Dr. David Hopson |
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October 8 , 2007 Over the past few weeks, I’ve briefly touched base on budgeting, future planning, the R.E.D. circuit breaker, measures of student success and the problems with declining enrollments. I’m sure the relationships between these items are fairly evident to all as are the difficulties in holding everything together and providing an excellent education to our children. I can understand how people look at expanding learning time as another burden—perhaps the straw that breaks the camel’s back. As I look at what has to be accomplished in the next two months just to meet state requirements to continue qualifying for this grant, I often wonder if it’s worth the work, aggravation and uncertainty. At the end of the day, while I’m not sure of the answer, I believe the idea remains sound. In this day and age of standards based learning as tested extensively on the MCAS (and the excessive amount of time that takes) I believe we’ve lost some of our ability to relate to children as well as the time to make learning ‘real’. The ability to expand the time provided to staff and children—not to do more of the same, but to apply skills and learning in creating newspapers, newscasts, musical, art, video and acting productions, doing environmental studies, spending time interacting with students and the many other potential activities we’ve somehow minimized—seems a small cost to pay for returning some sort of normalcy to the system. We certainly don’t have all the answers to each and every concern expressed by parents, both for and against ELT. We may not ever find the answers if we don’t move forward. Most importantly, I fear we’ll be missing out on the opportunity to make a difference in our children’s education, even if only for as long as the grant money is provided. To move forward requires many steps. Each committee (elementary, middle and high school) must use the summer survey results to modify and clarify schedules and course offerings. Potential outside partners must be identified; any further areas of staff interests and talents that may be used to offer additional activities need to be identified. We need to put this revised information together and present it in a public forum leading to a final parent survey. Collective bargaining agreements have to be negotiated with all unions affected by this potential change. Finally, the school committee needs to review all of this information and make an informed decision as to whether or not we move forward at this time. Assuming that all of this is done in a timely manner and meets the criteria to move forward in the district, we still have to work with the state Department of Education to develop a final implementation plan that they’ll accept for September of 2008. By mid-December, we’ll know the basic answers regarding whether we desire to move forward and what the changes may be. The final answers regarding success will be much more difficult to measure and take much more time to be evident. As a district we’ll meet the mandated needs of children no matter the outcome of this decision. The basic question before us is: what do students gain and lose under ELT compared to making no changes other than those mandated by the state and federal governments or those required by the budgetary and other constraints of the district? That of course is a question that we each must find the answer to. ### |
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