Tomorrow the School Board will meet to consider Interim Superintendent Vargas’s proposal for an All City High plan which is meant to serve an unidentified number of students that this district has already failed to educate.
This program was a collaborative effort between the district and the Rochester’s Teacher Union. A committee was formed “to identify issues student’s face in our traditional schools and propose[d] solutions. Each member of the committee identified the ingredients of their ideal school. Each committee member was asked to invite a parent or community member who is interested in our children’s future. Each parent and community member shared their vision and their experiences in regards to our traditional educational process. At each site the schools will utilize innovative scheduling and staffing to create smaller learning communities on the two campuses.”
District staff and teachers created a program and then asked one parent or community member to “share their experiences” not be involved in the process.
A key component of the program is the “Family of Five” theme. “All staff will have office hours 3 times each week for 1 hour totaling a minimum of 3 hours each week and every staff member will be assigned 5 students to mentor and guide.”
Students will be assigned a “family” that will have less than an hour a week to address their mental, physical, emotional, social, and financial concerns.
At the DPC meeting Monday, Commissioner White pointed out that there were several problems with this program. Students, parents, teachers, and community members have pointed out that there are many problems with this program.
Our children don’t need another program that serves the needs of adults. There is no doubt that we have an obligation to find a way to solve the problems for students created by a system of education that initially failed to educate them. However, employing more adults is not the solution.
If the progenitors of this program did not deem it necessary to involve students and parents from the beginning of the process, how valued is their participation in the process?
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