Ignored Parent (Parent): Dear Douglas County Board of Education, How do you sleep at night? Today was the first day of school for most of Douglas County students. As these students enter their schools on the first day, they are seeing that great teachers have moved on and new, and often unexperienced, teachers have taken their place. As a Board of Education member, how do you sleep at night knowing that teacher morale is at an all-time low and you have done nothing to learn why teachers feel so badly about the district and have held no one responsible for allowing morale to plummet well below neighboring districts? A quarter of our students are being greeted by a new principal who most likely will spend their first year struggling to implement poorly defined reform initiatives that have been rushed to the table at the expense of staff and students. How do you sleep at night knowing that many principals will be counting down the days until they too can leave a district where they don’t respect the central administration and that you have refused to acknowledge or hold anyone responsible for the high levels of building administrative turnover? Many students will be entering school buildings that are in desperate need of repair today. This year classes will be disrupted and students will miss out on precious learning time because of operational failures within school buildings. How do you sleep at night knowing that you have diverted millions of dollars away from our schools in order to pay for your reforms and have not addressed the real reasons why you are afraid a bond initiative won’t pass – because parents and staff no longer trust you to spend precious tax dollars appropriately? Parents will be dropping off their kids while silently hoping that the reforms you have imposed on their children won’t affect their ability to receive a high quality education. Many elementary parents will be looking at their child’s classroom and worrying if their child can succeed in a classroom where there are clearly too many kids. High school parents whose children are still on the 6 of 8 schedule will be praying that their children use their vast number of off periods wisely and wishing that their kids could be in school for a full day. How do you sleep at night with the knowledge that parent satisfaction is at an all-time low, knowing that you have done next to nothing to address the concerns of parents and instead have approved the hiring of a PR firm which will divert dollars away from the classroom in order to convince the public that all is well in this district? Finally and most importantly, how do you sleep at night knowing that you were elected, not by the majority of parents and staff members, but as a result of tricking the 70% of the community who does not have children in the schools by fabricating problems in our district and accepting the financial assistance of hundreds of thousands of dollars from individuals and organizations outside of Douglas County? How do you sleep knowing that Fair Campaign Act laws were broken in order for you to win control of our student’s future? How do you sleep knowing that you have put on a show of trying to mend the community but that your decision making will always place what is best for your political career and party before what is best for students, their families and the staff members who teach them?
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 02:27:22 +0000
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