Saturday, October 17, 2015

Letter to the Editor: Parents should Scrutinize School Redistricting Proposal Carefully

To Middletown Elementary School Parents, 

PLEASE show up on Oct 22nd at the high school for 7pm and show your support for finding an alternative to redistricting to help your elementary schools. The preliminary plans for redistricting are just that, preliminary. If you looked at plan E3 and saw you were not being moved and assumed you don't have to worry, that is not a good assumption. My husband Steve Roberts was at the meeting when they decided what plans they would present on Oct 22nd and it was very clear to all there that these were just a few options that got close to meeting the goals but did NOT meet the level of socioeconomic balancing the majority of the committee would like to achieve. They are looking at percentage of kids receiving free and reduced lunch and trying to balance these numbers across the 8 schools.

 Under their current proposals, plan E presented in the 9/14 slides better achieves this goal and moves over 800 kids at the cost of destroying current proximity to schools for families. Do know that they are still working on different plans and different plans will likely be presented on 11/7. Even if you thought you didn't need to be concerned about this because you weren't moving in the plans you saw, what about the 450-800+ other kids and families who would be forced to move from their school? I truly hope some better voluntary movement can occur to support the overcrowding at Farm Hill for next year and in the meantime we can be more creative in determining how to bridge the achievement gap with preschool, after school help and summer school assistance.

Also, please note that NO elementary school is currently out of racial balance at this point, and the state of CT has not asked that anything be done to balance the schools. Since we have time as we are NOT out of balance yet, please come on the 22nd and ask that a forced redistricting not be recommended and ask the committee to pursue a more voluntary approach to promote more balance. Moving neighborhoods all over puts a lot of stress on all the families involved and my sincere hope is on the 22nd we can convince the redistricting committee to go back to the drawing board and reconsider the plan to do this.


Catherine Roberts, Middletown

8 comments:

  1. We moved to a certain neighborhood because of the schools. I want to know which BOE candidates support this as illy unnecessary redistricting and which don't because the ones who don't get my vote!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Republicans are firmly against re-districting..

    Cheryl, Jon Pulino and Chris Petter were seen at Vinal this morning handing out flyers in opposition of this. Enna Macri, the current associate superintendent of the schools feels this is a necessity in town, even though the city's racial balance is up to snuff. She has gone gone on record to say that: "kids enjoy being on the bus more." Crazy Enza, really crazy!!!

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  3. Children should go to school in the neighborhood in which they live, period. This social engineering project to achieve "racial balance" is an absurd waste of city resources and parent's and children's time (commuting.

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  4. Enza's ignorant comment made it very clear she does not have children. Does she know what its like to put a kindergartner or first grader on the bus unsupervised for 40 minutes? No, she doesn't. I also have a problem with the fact that many of these people who are willing to "shuffle" our children all over Middletown DON'T have children in the Middletown district either. They have no idea how this bleeds into our days of getting our kids up earlier to catch an earlier bus, a 40 minute round trip to pick-up or drop-off our children, or a later time getting home to do homework before extra curricular activities begin. And yes, Enza I do have a "car" and I worked my butt off to have it. Why should that be a reason that's ok to move my 6 year old across town?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Enza's ignorant comment made it very clear she does not have children. Does she know what its like to put a kindergartner or first grader on the bus unsupervised for 40 minutes? No, she doesn't. I also have a problem with the fact that many of these people who are willing to "shuffle" our children all over Middletown DON'T have children in the Middletown district either. They have no idea how this bleeds into our days of getting our kids up earlier to catch an earlier bus, a 40 minute round trip to pick-up or drop-off our children, or a later time getting home to do homework before extra curricular activities begin. And yes, Enza I do have a "car" and I worked my butt off to have it. Why should that be a reason that's ok to move my 6 year old across town?

    ReplyDelete
  6. " . . . in the meantime we can be more creative in determining how to bridge the achievement gap with preschool, after school help and summer school assistance."

    Preschool is a waste of time and resources. Studies have shown that any advantages gained in preschool or early education vanish by third grade. The only thing that will bridge any achievement gap is parental and family involvement. When parents and families don't show an interest in education, the children will have no motivation or interest, either.

    This is a societal problem that cannot be overcome without the involvement of children's families. Unless parents are held accountable, nothing will change, and parents will not be held accountable, as long as political correctness is allowed to rule the day.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Let's guess who's behind the redistricting- Ed4Ed & Charles

    ReplyDelete
  8. Middletown has already inconvenienced parents with these ridiculous Professional Development days that happen every other Monday. These 1/2 day schedules were put into place for common core development. It's been 2 years, now going on 3! These children need to be in school! I know I speak for the working parents who have had to make arrangements to pay for childcare on these days and it's not easy. Now they want to inconvenience parents again with busing kids long distances and drive down property values. Good job...Middletown is a great place to live! NOT!

    ReplyDelete

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