The 2016-’17 school budget was given the green light at the April 26 Board of Education meeting by a 7-1 vote, leaving those loud questions from parents and taxpayers in the deaf chamber.
Does WW-P really need so many supervisors (29), administrative, or non-teaching staff?
Do Chromebooks really help rather than harm our children?
Why don’t we hire more student guidance counselors, not supervisors?
Every year students and families struggle with course selections and college planning. Given the increasingly rigid rules on course selections and ever dwindling options to pursue studies of their interests, our students are in desperate need for help, and families are frequently frustrated with the cookie cutter-style responses from the schools regarding their questions and concerns.
Students are in great need of help to cope with stress from various sources — academic, social, developmental, or even family related. Just a few months ago the school superintendent even appeared on several national media outlets to declare a mental health crisis in this district. He has been talking about whole child/every child education and the individual needs of every student, not only academic but also social and developmental. But ironically he gave us a rosy picture of our schools in his budget presentation last night, as if that dire mental health epidemic he had declared has miraculously vanished. This administration’s actions do not add up to its words.
Instead of hiring more guidance counselors to truly help students’ individual needs, this administration has been in a frenzy of hiring supervisors, citing the need for state-required teacher evaluations.
We have 29 supervisors who go to each teacher’s classroom two or three times a year, fill out some evaluation forms, and give scores to each teacher. Bureaucracy! I really can’t think of a better word for this. By the way, where are students and parents in this teacher evaluation process?
And what do we get from this supervisor-centered school system? Messing up the curriculum, teaching teachers how to teach, driving good teachers out of the town, and leaving students helpless … the list goes on.
At least, if our money cannot be put in better use, please save us the money.
Why are we doing this? In searching for an answer, I can’t help but thinking about the PARCC test and the changes in our schools.
To be clear, I am not against the PARCC test. PARCC has its purpose and merits, and it will help some schools. But what deeply worries me is that our district is aligning its curricula and resources to the PARCC test. Getting rid of midterms and finals, removing Option II, imposing rigid rules on course selections, buying Chromebooks etc. Just to mention a few.
WW-P schools have had excellent programs and curricula for decades. We should not abandon what has made us successful in order to meet the PARCC standard. We are already far surpassing that standard. No worries, no panic. Benchmarking and tying to PARCC is dangerous. It will pull down our schools.
To justify the elimination of the grade four and five A&E program last year, the superintendent criticized the district for being too grade-driven and lacking meaningful learning. He promised truly differentiated education for all kids.
But what we are actually moving toward is a bureaucratic school system and more rigid and limiting curriculums. The focus on students is gone. I see a system being created in which everyone is concerned more about what his/her boss thinks about him/herself than about the true needs of our children at schools. Meaningful and differentiated learning? Unfortunately that is only in the rear view mirror, and fading away fast.
Mike Jia
West Windsor
