I am BLOWN AWAY right now! I just received a phone call from my daughters’ principal. There are only 3 days left before school starts and there are over a thousand students at this school, so I knew it must be something urgent. She told me that she wanted to speak to me regarding the PJI opt out forms that I submitted for all three of my children. I braced myself. She began with, “Unfortunately…”, which put me into battle mode. But then as I listened, she continued with “Unfortunately your children can’t be opted out of our curriculum. But I completely respect your decision to opt them out of the state testing. Parents here do it all the time”. For those of you unfamiliar with the PJI opt out forms, they actually do ask for students to be opted out of any common core curriculum, but this is more of an effort to make a statement. I told the principal as much. She then asked me if I had any questions for her. She extended an invite for me to meet with her, the director of curriculum, and THE ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT! I told her that I was already very informed, but that I would consider it. I did ask her about what the children who opted out would be doing during testing. She told me that there were enough opt outs PER GRADE to warrant grade specific classroom time on testing days! But wait…there’s more. THIS IS WHERE IT GETS REALLY AMAZING. She went on to invite me to feel free to forward her any material that I had that offered different perspectives on CCSS. She told me that she recently opened a twitter account and has been reading a lot of material that covers both sides of the debate. She specifically mentioned reading articles from the Huffington Post and watching videos on YouTube. She ended by saying, “My door is always open for you”. I ended by telling her that she is a “ROCK STAR!” (yes I really did use that term). The word is SPREADING, people are LISTENING, keep FIGHTING, California!
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 01:48:02 +0000