As a parent of a 1st grader and rising Kindergartner, I have been keeping up with the recent chatter on Facebook and in carpool line regarding the KHS board, communication issues, and controversial staff changes at the high school. I wanted to offer my perspective for a couple of reasons. First, while I can’t claim to be a completely neutral party, I do feel a certain sense of removal from some issues because of the age of my children. Second, having been a teacher myself for ten years, I have an “inside” perspective into school politics (be they positive or negative). However, I must temper my words with the admission that I do not routinely go to board meetings. I attended the town-hall board meeting last summer, and my aversion to confrontation and contention has kept me away ever since. There is a very vocal group of parents here that I know genuinely wants the best for their children, and I commend your level of commitment to making Kestrel better. I am heartened by your passion and, speaking for us introverts, relieved that you speak up. However, I also feel that there are some who cannot control their temper or their words and thus render themselves and their message ineffective. For two years, I have watched this Facebook page flood with messages of disenchantment, especially at the high school level, from parents who want change. We have voiced our desire for increased, effective communication as well as a general lack of confidence in the level of education at the high school level (especially comparative to the middle school). I hear that many middle school students leave after 8th grade because the high school (be it deserved or undeserved). Parents have organized meetings and voiced their desires to work towards making changes at the high school in order to entice more families to stay after 8th grade rather than this mass exodus that seems to take place every year. I cannot say if this is deserved, but it is present regardless. Effective change is rarely easy. Humans resist change. For better or worse, surely we can agree that there are changes being made at Kestrel. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying you have to agree with the methods used or decisions made by the board - but they are making changes. We have been begging for change. They have made them. As a parent of young children, I for one have been extremely apprehensive when reading the recent messages about “wiping the board clean” or pleas to get the state to intervene. Kestrel exists at the pleasure of the state charter, and if that goes, we all have to move our children. I.do.not.want.that.to.happen. I won’t make a claim to know how difficult or easy it is to revoke a school’s charter, but from the state’s perspective, it seems like a quick and easy solution to a “problem school”. Please understand the aversion some of have to this course of action. Please understand I am grateful for all of us that are concerned, involved, and passionate. But we also must temper that passion with understanding and compromise. If you truly believe the board are inhuman robots who care nothing for the education, students, or faculty at KHS, then your children should already be gone. If you believe that the board are people too, then we must concede that there are things we do not know. I am not ready to believe that the members of the board sat down at the table and flipped a coin when deciding to renew contracts. We might not have agreed with their reasons, or their decision, but discussing employees personal records and performance is not an option. The board does have a great deal of work to do in the area of communication and open decision-making, but personnel matters is not one of them. It is a legal, privacy issue and a continuous waste of breath and words to ask. We can voice our opinion regarding staff in our parent surveys and by writing letters to the board about staff members that you feel do an outstanding job now, rather than later. Let them have a stack of support on the table before contract decisions are made - that is how we will have a say in those decisions. We will not have a say after they are gone. True, effective, meaningful, and positive change will come from collaboration - not from contention. For me, I want more communication (where legally allowed) before decisions are made (for example, when the snow days were being decided - throw up an online survey asking which option would work best for teachers and students: adding days to the end of the year, Saturday school, Spring break, etc). Even if the survey confirmed their decision about Saturday school - just the act of asking makes parents and teachers feel like running this school is a team effort. Utilizing technology to make parents AND teachers feel that they have a say would be a wonderful first step towards rebuilding the injured relationship between parents and staff with the board. This shouldn’t be about a power struggle, it should be a conversation about sharing the workload. If you believe the board, the faculty and staff, and the parents all want the same thing - the best possible education for our children, then everything else becomes about working together in order to achieve it.
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 14:22:42 +0000
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