I have written a letter to our school board and I encourage you to do the same. Ill attach the email addresses in the comments below. Please like my letter on the CCS page (under posts by others). As the parent of two successful and academically gifted CCS graduates, I am motivated to seek the continual improvement of the district that gave my boys the education that was most appropriate for each of them. One boy was designated superior cognitive and the other is gifted in math and science and has a reading disability. To this end, I attended the first meeting about the impending changes in the Gifted and Talented department and spoke to Dr. Boyle after the meeting. I have also since researched the pertinent Ohio Department of Education documents and spoken to parents of current students. The Eclipse program has long been an outstanding benefit to our gifted students and has attracted and retained many of their families in our district. From what Dr. Boyle said, the expansion to third grade and the loss of looping for the fourth and fifth graders were in anticipation of proposed ODE changes. I see no indication of that any of these in ODE documents and, even if they were there, there would be a window of implementation much longer than the one week that has been given to our parents to make life-altering decisions about their childrens educations. There is a lack of geographical equity at play in the placement of services. The entire East Side of Columbus will be served by math and reading pull out services in one building, Leawood. There will be no Eclipse classroom on the East Side. The Northwest quadrant has a huge amount of identified students yet is losing an Eclipse classroom. Students in the same building are being assigned to three different schools. This disruption to their educations cannot be considered beneficial on any level. The needs of our twice-exceptional students have been ignored as drastic change is often catastrophic to their academic and social/emotional success. Children who are gifted in science or who are gifted in reading or math but not both will receive no services. The public relations value of this move can only hurt any future levy prospects. This was presented as a fait accompli both in the meeting I attended and in the letters telling parents that, if they did not accept the plan within days, their children would be denied services. These are the parents who vote, who mobilize on social media, who talk to their neighbors. They are the parents of some of the children who make our district look good. I have no idea who was on the alleged Gifted Task Force but I do know that it could not have included parents. Actually, I would like you to send me the names of everyone on this task force, if indeed it did exist. In conclusion, please consider postponing any changes to the Gifted and Talented program for one year. During that year, please engage PACE and other parents of our gifted students. There is no reason to not do so.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 01:22:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015