Parents Speaking Up - October 20. 2021

One of the parents who spoke at last night's board meeting was my good friend and very smart #lawyermom, Emily Sperandio. During the public comment portion of the meeting, where citizens can address Dr. Blaine and the Board of Trustees, she asked some great questions and made some excellent points. I asked her for a written copy of her remarks and for permission to share. Here's what she said,

"First, I want to begin by thanking our school district leaders and Board members for recognizing the benefit of allowing and trusting parents and community members into meetings to speak and debate important issues facing our schools. I continue to believe that those who come to these meetings share in a common goal to provide the best education for all of the children of our district - regardless of where they live or how they approach each issue. I appreciate community involvement and it’s good that our board does too. Receiving the letter of thanks from Chris Gonzales (or Pam last year) for participating is a nice touch during this time where some would have our society believe that participating in your child’s education amounts to terrorism.

Second, as I read through the campus performance objectives for our district, I see many variables at play when evaluating success at our many schools. I also recognize that up to, and including this point in time, ALL seven (7) board members are equally interested in supporting each campus and seeing success. No doubt this would change if we move to single member district representation. I want to continue to support the board in the fight to keep our district represented by an at-large election.

Additionally, when looking at the goals and campus performance objectives put out in the last board workshop and again tonight, I see that Panorama Student Surveys are used to collect certain data from our children and it is supposedly used to infer “school connectedness.” Other than using the responses for this high level review of campus connectedness, I’d like to know how this data is processed, who is given the raw data, and what actions are taken from it? Are parents privy to their child’s responses? Is the school counselor given the student’s responses? Is this emotional health data considered private health information? Where do we keep the child’s responses? Have these questions even been considered at the board level?

I see that this social-emotional curriculum has become part of each school’s performance objectives - like test scores. The goals of each campus are tied to character education and social-emotional learning curriculum. How will these curricula be designed? How will they be evaluated? I think it is imperative that parents are made aware of that curriculum before it is out upon our student in any way.

And finally I want to question the accuracy of these numbers that are found for each school. Let’s look at one school pattern - Wilchester students only feel connected at 67%, MMS at 40% and Stratford at 35%. Thirty five percent from what is often called “Stratford America.” What?! I would ask that you consider why Stratford students report only 35% connected to their school - when their actions surely don’t suggest that. You guys were at the football game this past weekend - Stratford America was described by some of y’all as “electric.” After hearing about the electric atmosphere involving all types of Stratford student body and terrific participation in the food drive that brought in 200,000 cans of food - I would seriously question that survey number. And I would seriously question what else does Panorama have wrong?"

Thank you, Emily Broussard Sperandio, for being involved in SBISD and speaking up for parents and our children.

LA

#lawyermom #LNS #sbisdboardmeeting

Posted on 20 Oct 2021, 16:06 - Category: Facebook Blog