Holyoke Citizens Concerned With State of City’s Schools HOLYOKE, Mass. (WGGB) – Parents, teachers and students agree: Holyoke Schools are not headed in the right direction. It was a shared conversation regarding the growing education crisis in Holyoke Saturday at Salsarengue Restaurant, as community members met to address that crisis and brainstorm ways to fix it. “There are so many working pieces and we want all those pieces working together and that’s what we’re trying to provide. We’re trying to provide a platform where everybody can engage each other in a civil fashion and we can talk about real problems and address them,” said Agustan Morales, President of the Holyoke Teacher’s Association. Several coalition members from Taking It Back, a group geared towards challenging the state of Holyoke’s educational issues, were on hand to bring awareness to city-wide concerns, including the Morgan School’s takeover by the state. “Our elected officials, our teachers, our administrators have no voice in that school. It is totally being taken over by a private Houston company, which is kind of…who’s never run an elementary school either,” said Dorothy Albecht, a math teacher at Holyoke High School. While the lighthearted consisted of food, music, face painting, and games, the conversation was a lot heavier. “We continue to have a very high truancy rate here in the city of Holyoke. We have a very high dropout rate here in the city of Holyoke. We have, in relation to that, a lot of crime,” said Darlene Elias, a parent and alum of Holyoke High School. “We don’t want our schools privatized, we want them public and we want them in public hands. The people have a right to determine what’s right for their child, not the state, not the federal government, the local community should have a say,” said Morales. One of the biggest issues on hand was testing. “The overabundance of testing right now is a huge problem. I spend 25 plus days out of my school year just administering a test in one form or another,” said Morales. With a budget deficit of $4.5 million and the potential loss of 20 jobs, some believe the school department is going to face a lot more challenges in the next fiscal year. “It’s the slow destruction of our local control of our schools because so much money is being drained out of our city,” said Albecht. June 16th will unofficially be named “Taking It Back Day,” and on that day parents, teachers and community members will have their chance to voice their concerns about the school system at the school committee meeting at Dean Tech High School.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 22:08:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015