Board of Ed Reduces Public Comment Time

At Tuesday night's Board of Education meeting, the Board voted on several policy changes, including a change to the Bylaws of the Board to reduce the amount of time individuals have to speak from 5 minutes to 3 minutes during the "public session" portion of the agenda.

The Board also updated its Directory Information Policy (5145.15) to say that "The District may disclose any of the items listed as "Directory Information" without prior written consent, unless notified to the contrary." Parents have 10 days after receiving the Student and Parent Handbook to notify the school principal that they do NOT want such information to be released.

"Directory information" means one or more of the following items: student's name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, major field of study, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, photograph, computer and/or video images, grade levels, electronic mail address, weight and height of a members of an athletic teams, dates of attendance, degrees and
awards received, including honor roll publication, and the most recent previous public or private school attended by the student, parent's name and/or email address."

BOE member Renee Johnson-Thornton objected to the new policy, stating that it was not OK for her 10-year-old's address and email address to be publicly released without her consent. She couldn't understand why this policy had to be changed to put the burden on parents to opt out instead of the school not releasing such information without specific exception. BOE member Sally Boske said it was "a paperwork nightmare" for administrators...keeping track of a small number of people who DON'T want such information released is easier than the large numbers of parents who don't protest. Johnson-Thornton asked about what kind of notice is sent home to parents to explain this policy, and she was told that "it's in the parent handbook...parents are supposed to read that."

The BOE also considered a new policy on transgender athletes. Taken from the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) rules and regulations, the policy requires transgender student athletes to compete in the gender of their birth certificate unless they have undergone sex reassignment (either before puberty or at least two years after all surgical and anatomical changes have been completed).

Bylaws of the Board 9000 - Role of the Board and Member (Powers, Purposes, Duties) was amended to state: "Electronic mail, including personal, sent of received by Board Members may be considered public record subject to public disclosure or inspection.

During the public comment session, 2 parents asked about the replacement program for PROBE (and I was one of the two). You may not remember, but both PROBE teachers retired this last year, and the program for gifted and talented children (based on CMT scores) was canceled. During the budget struggles this past spring, Asst. Superintendent Barbara Senges told the BOE that the elementary school principals WANTED to cancel PROBE, and they WANTED to redesign the program to be more efficient, less costly, and better suited to reach more gifted and talented students based on their individual needs. This new program would be developed during the 2009-2010 school year based on collective efforts by the Elementary School Principals.

Said program has not yet started, but the Superintendent confirmed to me via email that a summary of the new program would be available soon - I'll share as soon as I get it. I've been unhappy about the rumors I've heard about the replacement program (or lack thereof), but I'll sit on it until I can get the full story.

Macdonough PTA President Jennifer Alexander (a frequent EYE contributer and Middletown super-star in so many ways) urged the BOE to exercise great caution in relying on JCJ's report. She pointed out several errors in the report (especially those pertaining to Macdonough) and asked the Board to think carefully about what conclusions it could draw from JCJ's data. North End Action Team (NEAT) President Izzie Greenberg echoed Alexander's comments, stating that the BOE needed the most current information to make a good decision, and that the public couldn't be left out. Yesterday's Hartford Courant ran a piece on this subject: check out the article here.

In other news, there will be a new Robotics Course offered at MHS, with the equipment needed for the course funded by a Perkins Grant. The class will be open to all interested students.

Finally, the Board voted to hold its regular monthly meetings in the City Council Chambers, and if that location wasn't available, to hold meetings in the MHS Media Center.

Commentary:

While the main focus of the meeting seemed to be on the JCJ Architecture presentation (covered in a separate EYE story), I struggled to understand why the BOE would shorten the amount of time it allows the public to comment on important issues. The public has repeatedly pressed the BOE for more transparency and better communication, but now has less time to provide feedback in return. At a time when JCJ's recommendations will undoubtedly shape what our school system looks like for a good long time, how does this make sense? How can the BOE make the best decision possible for our children on this or any other issue if it limits parental feedback options?

Granted, there will be two public forums in the beginning of December to enable parents to interact with the BOE directly, but I'm thinking long term consequences, not just the immediate subject of the District Utilization Study.

For example: JCJ's study points out that we can solve our over/under capacity issues by redistricting, but only if we're OK with totally messing up the district's racial balance. But, Middletown is already on notice from the State because Macdonough Elementary is out of compliance with Scheff v. O'Neill. That case mandates that any one school in a district cannot have more than a 25% difference in its minority population from the District's average minority population. The Nov. 11 memo reported Macdonough to have a 68% minority population to the District average of 41%. Then again, Macdonough only has 211 students, so it would really take just a few individuals to swing the population back into compliance.

On the flip side, the JCJ report also noted that Farm Hill has a minority population of about 36%, which is the lowest in the District. The proposed re-districting would give Moody the lowest minority population (28%) but bump Macdonough's average minority population to about 75%.

One possible solution to both problems is to close Macdonough. That would just be unfair and mean-spirited to all those in the North End who have poured their hearts and souls into turning their community around (while winning all kinds of awards for their efforts too). Parents who face losing a community school while their children suffer long bus rides across town to "balance" other school populations aren't likely to invest much in the education process either.

There is another option: to convert Macdonough into a magnet school. On November 11, 2009, Superintendent Michael Frechette sent a memo to the Board of Ed, outlining "a study to explore a magnet school option at Macdonough Elementary", the purpose of which would be:

1. To create an exceptional learning environment at Macdonough Elementary that preserves the integrity of the school, builds on progress and recognizes the gains that have been made by the current leadership.



2. To build a strong partnership between Macdonough Elementary, Wesleyan University and Capital Preparatory Magnet School that builds on each organization's assets.

Now, whether the District can "exempt" itself from Scheff v. O'Neill requirements by creating a magnet school remains to be seen. I will say that I was excited to read how this proposed "non-traditional methodology to create a pedagogy that focuses on successful education practices for children from urban, economically under-resourced, ethnically diverse communities" might be just the ticket for the North End. But then I had a completely different thought right after hearing at least one BOE member verbalize surprise that such an option had gotten far enough in the planning stage for a meeting between interested parties without anyone from the BOE knowing anything about what was being suggested.

Here's my thought: what's so special about a magnet school that gets everyone excited to get in line to go there? Why don't we feel that way about ALL the schools in our district? Why don't we act like all our schools are magnet schools?

I guess what I'm after is that I'm worried that a "simple" little action like reducing public comment time will only make it harder to create the kind of community partnership between parents, Board of Education members and School Administrators that must exist for our school system to flourish. There must be open and transparent communication in both directions: we have eight elementary schools, all of which want to preserve that "community school" feeling that still exists. Yet the simple fact that we have eight elementary schools in the same town also means that we can trend toward a "cookie-cutter" mentality for simple administrative ease. It's just easier to decree from on high or to let "professionals" decide what to do.

We cannot fall into this trap. Middletown's greatest charm is its city amenities tempered with small-town feeling and community pride. I love the rural quality to my part of town, but I also adore Main Street bustle and the Wesleyan connection. We live in a city, but our schools have that small town feeling, and that's a great thing to have.

So then, the balancing act that the School Administration and the BOE must do to maintain the "big-city-budget-with-small-town-feel" legitimately is hard. But our children are worth it, and JCJ's $138,000 study is sounding like that's what parents are saying. Why can't we then go a step further to use this moment in time as an opportunity to remold our district according to the same principals that we'd apply to the creation of a magnet school? If we have to re-district, and if the Administration has admitted that we need a more challenging curriculum, and if we do spend more than the state average per student on transportation, plant operation and instructional staff and services costs but less than the state average on everything else, why can't we just go for it and overhaul the whole system? Did you know that Middletown's elementary students have just 27 hours of PE in a week compared to the state average of 40 hours? We're not even giving our kids a chance at developing healthy habits, yet I heard the Asst. Superintendent tell the BOE that "we'd love to have a longer instructional day." What's holding us back?

This moment won't come again for a long time, and when it does, it will be harder, more costly and we'll have much further to go to get to where we'd like to be. We also run the risk of chasing young families away from Middletown because the school system "isn't what it used to be." Let's not be that kind of city...let's be the town that could...and did.