A-H School Board Show Up

There is an urgent need for people to attend the next few A-H School Board Meetings, because crucial curriculum decisions are being made, and public input is needed.  Otherwise the 3 radical right board members will derail years of good work and place major burdens on teachers and admin– to try to take our schools “back” to a time before we cared about diversity or equity or inclusion.  And before we knew the power of hands-on learning.  Below is info about upcoming meetings, and then more background about what is happening.  Please try to show up to be in the room to let the board know people do not support the radical right program to undermine our schools!

Please add the 3 upcoming public school board meetings to your calendar.  Sign up at the start of the meeting if you want to speak.  Written comments are very welcome as well.  We need representation in the room as well as public comments:

Here is a link for communicating with the school board— even if you cannot attend, send a message to the Board.

Ideas to speak about: 

Ask the board to listen to the experts in the room (teachers and curriculum experts) to adopt critical high school curricula and text. 

Point out research papers that show direct instruction on its own without hands on application does not stimulate critical thinking skills.  

Express your concern that this will disadvantage our students when they take ACTs/SAT and in college education. 

Express concern that we will lose staff due to this chaos created by these demands

What is at stake:

At the last work session they decided not to move forward with key curriculum pieces including an update to very outdated physics curriculum because they felt the new curriculum had too much hands-on experiential learning and not enough direct instruction (teachers standing in the front talking at students)! 

Experiential learning is research-based as to how students learn best. The reasons for not adopting new social studies/history curriculum is probably obvious- they think it’s too “DEI”. Not adopting a new curriculum is one thing– but they are also ending the social skills curriculum that the district has been using for years called Character Strong. Instead they want the district to create their own (a social skills curriculum is required by state law or they would likely select none). The current curriculum has been embraced by students & staff alike. It’s easy to understand and it works. To ask the district during a time of deep budget cuts to create, train, and implement a whole new curriculum when we have a great one is fiscally irresponsible. The radical right board members seem to think (despite proof to the contrary) that the current curriculum has parts that relate to “equity” (thay have made caring for others a dirty word now!).  The CEO of the company that created it wrote a letter saying that DEI is not even a focus of the curriculum.  

Here’s what the K-5 curriculum is- Courage, Respect, Perseverance, Gratitude, Empathy, Responsibility, Honesty, Cooperation, Creativity. Each month of the school year focuses on one of these 9 words. How are these bad things to be teaching our kids?  In our schools, kids are getting it & using these words on their own unprompted. Teachers report hearing 2nd grade students compliment each other on having good perseverance during a gym game or suggest using their creativity to solve a problem.  But the radical right members seem to want to throw this all out in the name of going back to some fabled past– and maybe also in subservience to a national  political ethic that represents the opposite of all of these values…

More Background…

Teachers and curriculum specialists spent significant hours and months working hard to research and pilot curricula for ELA (elementary), Science (Biology, Physics, AP Psychology), Social Studies, and SEL.  3 of the 6 school board members (Arco, Audette, Hoekman) did not accept the expert (teacher and curriculum review committee’s) recommendations for Social Studies, Biology, Physics, and Social Studies. Their rationale for refusing the recommendation was based on their personal ideology (for Social Studies) and the belief that direct teaching is better over phenomenon based teaching materials (for Science).  They want our already burdened teachers to go back and re-review additional materials and pull this off in a short time.
This comes at a time when the district is short of $ 6M funds and teachers lack support due to staffing cuts. These 3 board members do not want to compromise based on their statements made in the April 14 work session (not recorded) and additional meetings held with teachers later that week, instead blaming the other members who are standing firmly to promote critical thinking and competitive advantage for our students.

Thanks for any effort you can make to help protect our schools!