When your house is completely destroyed by a fire, there is no playbook or study to figure out how to deal with it. You will, however, find out how experienced your insurance agent is to help you through this crisis.
The same can be said about a school district’s administration during the Covid-19 pandemic. They will tell you that there is no playbook or study for them to rely on to figure out how to deal with it. However, they can listen to taxpayers in their district and work with them on a path forward.
In Union County, Jon Alder is now joining Triad and North Union to give parents a choice on whether their children go to school five days a week. Marysville is still in a holding pattern even though many parents in the district are at their wits end … so much so that they have been writing letters to their board members begging for help.
Most parental concern centers around the regression they are seeing in their children. Some pointed out how their kids used to enjoy school but now despise it. Others went so far as to talk about their own financial hardship and a few asked how far the administration’s decisions will set their children’s education back.
Marysville Superintendent Diane Allen met with the school board in an emergency meeting with parents calling for her replacement and was quick to say that students are behind because of the summer slide. When asked by Board Member Brian Luke about how she will get students back up to the right level, her answers were not reassuring. She talked about extending regression time during the pandemic, starting data meetings, intentionally embedding the right educational strategies in remote day plans, and doing more modeling. She also said she would call the superintendents of Fairbanks, North Union and other schools to see how they are operating. More importantly, she never told Luke how long the slide would last, but only that she didn’t think it would be permanent.
This is troubling for parents. They want a change now because they feel that just trying to finish out the nine weeks (by Oct. 16) is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. It’s not what their children need.
Could the slide be made up in a month or would it take nine months? Former Marysville educators told us the shortfall could actually put students behind by years or even never made up.
The only way we see out of this mess is hiring more teachers and communicating with the parents, something Allen has shied away from. We say this because teachers have relationships with students and those connections are what will mature through the year to allow teachers to motivate their students to do more. The number of teachers needed now in the district is at an all-time high, so high that the district office is on call for substitute help.
In the emergency board meeting, Allen was scrambling for answers and said she would also go back to the parent taskforce for more input.
Parents told us their taskforce’s opinion all along was for five days a week in school, which gave them a choice in their children’s education. They went on to explain that after the second meeting it was apparent the district’s decision was already made and their opinion really didn’t matter. They came away feeling like handpicked pawns in a game of chess rather than community members speaking on behalf of their children.
This is where we think the board can help so it doesn’t come off as if they are only listening when there is a levy to pass. Speaking up is the key and we agree with Board Member Dick Smith who encouraged parents to continue to speak out to the board.
We suggest widening the audience and, for example, moving the Saturday community coffee to the soccer fields on County Home Road where a much larger group of voters can present different ideas. It would be a move that gets the board out from under the thumb of Allen and shows that board members are reaching out to the public and asking for input rather than expecting them to come forward to be heard.
After all, parents are taxpayers who voted for five individual board members to be their voice in the decision-making process. They didn’t vote for Allen.