Have you Met Jordon DeGroote?
I am one of the many parents extremely concerned with the future of our schools. My oldest son just started kindergarten, and my twins started three-year-old pre-K so I started to attend the Board of Education meetings. I find them fascinating.
My first meeting was in August. I met Virginia Beissel Manzari there. We had planned to meet a few minutes before the meeting started. A few minutes later a young man joined us at the table. He introduced himself as Jordon DeGroote. I had no idea who he was. So I started talking to him and in a few minutes he mentioned to me that he was running for Board of Education. My first questions to him was “How old are you?” which he responded very eloquently “old enough to run for BOE.” My second comment to him was “I hope you are not doing this just to put it on your college application,” to which he responded, “I am running because I am a senior at High School South and I want to fix the system.”
Jordon explained to me that the only strong academic program that the high school students have is the STEM program, but what happens to a student who is interested in the arts? Or writing? Or public speaking? The school does not offer any programs to enhance the students’ education in those areas. In fact, if you have been following the events of the last couple of weeks, you know that 100 percent of the published letters to the editor to keep the Gifted & Talented program appeared to be from parents who have the most interest in continuing this program.
Jordon, who has more of a “creative” background, which the experts mentioned in their September 8 presentation that our high school students were lacking, is here to help fix what is broken. Jordon is not intimidated, even at his young age, to speak his mind. He is the perfect example of what a well-rounded education means as he not only knows how to speak well in public, he also tutors math as a source of income. The “critical thinking background” should not be placed as a higher educational priority over the “creative thinking background” as that would be a true disservice to our children’s education.
He brings a new and fresh perspective of how things can/should be done. This is a golden opportunity that we have because we can hear it from the “horse’s mouth” so to speak. Jordon has given valuable feedback on how to improve courses and how to improve the quality of education, and more than once he was turned down.
Jordon, was one of the “guinea pig” students to take the PARCC test two years ago, and once again all his feedback was ignored. I do believe that it is important to have an open mind and give a chance to the new generations on how to improve things.
Jordon is a great advocate of having a “well rounded” education, something that the experts encourage our school district to provide to our students, especially in high school as they were shocked at the level of stress that they found these students had and the fact that the students had lost their interest in learning. That eagerness of the younger years of discovering new things and learning was gone, and sadly enough shocked the experts.
Jordon was able to pinpoint the problem without even needing to listen to the experts, why? Because he is living them. We need to give him our support to enable him to put into practice his solutions, his creative thinking. When you go to the polls, vote intelligently, vote for Jordon, who will be able to fix some of the problems that the experts have pointed out in their presentation, as those are his running platform.
For more information on Jordon please visit his website, www.degroote4boe.org.
Veronica Mehno
West Windsor
