Anytime we speak up about Marysville Schools, it seems like the administration questions the merit of the content and tries to spin the message away from the narrative school officials have created to pass a levy.
We have always emphasized that we are for local schools, but we are also for telling the local voters exactly what is going on even if it’s an uncomfortable message, like talking about failing English and math scores that have been happening here for the past several years.
A month ago, we wrote a story about those low grades that highlighted ideas from High School Principal Tom Cochran on how to correct the problem. Cochran’s ideas came from one simple interview. One of his proposals was to shrink the lunch period to give students more time to study. This idea came to light because earlier this year Cochran met with School Supt. Diane Mankins to discuss the situation, but no new teachers were hired to help alleviate the problem.
Since the article was published, the state report cards have come out and parents are speaking up about the school’s grade of D in the category of preparing students for success. That prompted us to call Cochran to follow up on his ideas.
He told our reporter that he didn’t have enough time to talk and wanted an email with a list of questions so he could prepare his answers. We emailed him telling him what we were calling about and have followed up all week with calls and emails, but we still have not heard back from him.
We persisted in getting back to him because we have talked to many parents, students and district employees who have concerns about the large number of students in each class at the high school, particularly English. They said most classes have 30 and one even has 35 students. It’s not that hard to figure out that the overcrowding problem has come from no new positions being hired and high school teachers being moved over to the STEM school to handle an influx of freshman. Does that sound like it fits the school narrative of personalized learning with a growth mindset?
For Cochran not to call back to the newspaper to communicate the schools message is a tell in an of itself of how much he is allowed to talk publicly about what is going on in the school. We find that particularly interesting since there are two permanent school levies on the ballot in November.