A few days ago, I reached out to WW-P school district staff with a way to restore the middle school Science Bowl program. It was a highly popular program back in my time, and its students routinely placed at the national level, but it died out at Grover Middle School after the retirement of its coach, Rae McKenna.
In response, I received such illuminating lines as “the district has done away with the program” and that there were “concerns regarding the appropriate allocation of building-level resources,” which is perplexing, since we were proposing to meet all of the costs.
Later, McKenna told me that she ran the program for free, and that she actually offered to keep doing so after she retired. But the district didn’t let her. Rather than let a teacher keep coaching her team, and rather than let students continue an activity they enjoyed—all at no taxpayer cost—the district decided to step in.
When the district is faced with not one, but two offers to run a program for free, and still chooses to cite costs and resources as a reason not to run it, that behavior is deceitful.
The Science Bowl team was not extravagant. We practiced in a classroom, during lunch, in Barnes and Noble, wherever we could find. Rae McKenna bought our buzzers herself. Although the school didn’t fund us, they were always eager to showcase the banners and trophies we won.
Times have changed. The district no longer wants to showcase science and math, and it has no room for those students who enjoy studying science in bookshops.
But even though we don’t fit Dr. Aderhold’s ideal, we are whole children, and we deserve a space to call our own. We deserve an administration that supports us and values us. But, failing that, we’d take one that’s at least honest.
Arnav Sood
West Windsor
