Welcome to the community development in support of Silver Street Elementary. We are citizens concerned with keeping and maintaining this community anchor and historic landmark.
Please feel free to express your thoughts and opinions about ways to benefit our community school.
The graph you see below was created using publicly available school performance data from the Indiana Dept. of Education's website at www.doe.state.in.us/. Click on the graph below for a larger version.
Juxtapose the graph above with this quote from the Richmond, In Palladium-Item newspaper in 2001:
"Declining enrollment and poor student performance have driven the effort to consolidate the district and start programs that board members and administration believe will improve graduation and dropout rates and test scores." (Emphasis added.)
Thus, the RFR Committee in Richmond told the community that one of the primary purposes for implementing this plan was to improve the district's graduation rate. Unfortunately, their plan did the exact opposite. We simply cannot let Dr. Amick "fix" our school system like she did for Richmond.
Emotional appeals may be discounted as irrational, but cold, hard, objective facts are difficult to dismiss.
Watch for more parts of this series: The Amick File.
Posts
9 comments:
I can't believe no one has commented on this yet! I saw this today and my jaw dropped!!
That is terrible. Do we know what schools she closed in Richmond?
Yes, I searched on the Richmond Community Schools website under the Resources for Results Committee and it shows that they closed Parkview, Pleasant View, and Hibberd. I believe they were all elementary schools but I am not positive about Hibberd, it could have been a middle school.
I think we should present this information to the school board. It was also suggested to me that we schedule a meeting with the board instead of Dr. Brooks since in the end it is their decision. Also we could present some of the conflicting data.
I think it is terrible findings. I think that Michelle has a good idea to meet with the school board and not just Dr. Brooks.
I agree about meeting with the board, too. I think it would be a good idea to have ALL of our research together to present to them if such a meeting happens. They do have an open time during the School Board Meetings - so if nothing else, we can make a presentation to them at that time I guess.
What if we present one piece of evidence or so at a time during the school board meetings and keep a file on the information that we share with them. It would give them tidbits of information to mull over instead of being overwhelmed and it might give us a chance to get used to speaking in front of them. If others agree Bill, would you be able to present this? I know it's a big step, does anyone see anyway this could cause a problem?
She's been advising New Harmony to do the same; any advice?
Anonymous~
I really don't know what advice to give, as we lost our fight. However, this was the third time this fight erupted, so we did win twice before. First, research, research, research. It's important to gather all the data you can to understand the reason(s) why they want to close those schools. Evidently, they are faced with a problem in which they see school closures as a solution to resolve. So consider their perspective, then gather MORE data to find the pros and cons of both closing and not closing those schools. Finally, try to come up with a multitude of alternative solutions to the problem they are facing. Once you have your data ducks in a row, get your community involved with the information you've compiled so that everyone is well informed. One of the biggest issues we, as a community faced, was that she "warned" the school board that the community would become emotional and they had to disregard the emotion. So while yes, we were very emotional, we also had a long list of data-supported reasons why we wanted to keep our school(s) open (we ultimately lost 4, not just Silver Street). I think if we could have found multiple, sound [alternative] solutions to rectify our problem [extensive budget cuts], we may have had a slightly better chance at keeping the schools open. In the end, though, the budget cuts were so significant that we not only lost four schools, we've lost teachers, programs, etc. I wish you tons of luck!
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