From the Tribune and Georgian
School rezoning draws fire from several parents
By Ellen Robinson
Published: Friday, March 13, 2009 9:56 AM EDT
Learning that her gifted second-grade daughter is one of 177 students that will be transferred due to proposed school rezoning sent Mary Thompson to the streets with a petition and picket signs in hand.Her daughter attends Mary Lee Clark Elementary, but under the proposal will attend Crooked River Elementary next year.Thompson doesn't want her daughter to have to ride a bus to a school farther away from their Sugarmill Plantation home than the school she currently attends. Mary Lee Clark is within walking and bike-riding distance, while Crooked River Elementary is a few miles away across a state highway. She and her husband chose specifically to live where they do so their children would go to Mary Lee Clark."I don't want them moving my child who is in the gifted program at a well-performing school just so they can increase another school's standardized test scores," Thompson said. "She shouldn't be moved just because we live in a neighborhood that traditionally performs well on tests."
Thompson's neighbor, Deb Maner, says schools should be the hubs of neighborhoods. She said she understands the need for rezoning, but she said it's unethical for the board to redraw the lines through the middle of a neighborhood that is designed around Mary Lee Clark Elementary."They need to leave the children within a certain circumference of the school in that district and start the redistricting with the students that live outside of this circumference," said Mane, a local real estate professional who serves on the local Board of Realtors. "They should not be able to pick and choose which neighborhoods to shift around in such a spotty way."Maner said having a school within walking distance is a major deciding factor for the people who buy homes in Sugarmill Plantation."People that I deal with are more concerned about the school associated with a neighborhood and its location than they are concerned about square feet [of the home they are buying]," Maner said.Maner along with Thompson and other parents packed the Camden County Board of Education meeting room Tuesday night to speak out against the proposed rezoning of St. Marys elementary schools.There was standing room only as many residents of Sugarmill neighborhood packed in to have their voices heard and to learn more details about the proposal.Deputy superintendent Gary Blount said during the board meeting that the goals for rezoning some of St. Marys elementary student populations are to balance student numbers among the schools, to balance the proportion of students receiving free and reduced lunches in the schools and to create capacity for future growth in all of the schools."We have to do something to address the overcrowding in the St. Marys elementary schools. Students will have to be moved out of Mary Lee Clark; we have students in nine portable classrooms and six nontraditional classrooms," Blount said. "We are going to have more room in the new St. Marys Elementary School, so we began there with balancing out the student populations and those with free or reduced lunches."One of the reasons the board hopes to balance out the percentage of students receiving free or reduced lunches is because this factor is used as an indicator of standardized test-taking abilities.Crooked River Elementary School, which has 60 percent of students receiving free and reduced lunches, was the only school in the district not to meet Annual Yearly Progress requirements as laid out in No Child Left Behind for 2007-2008."Its much harder to meet Annual Yearly Progress with a higher percentage of free and reduced lunch recipients. We don't want to penalize the faculty and staff of schools because they have a disproportionately higher percentage of these students," Blount said.Affected neighborhoods and schools -- The board has proposed moving 177 current Mary Lee Clark students that live in the northeast area of Sugarmill Plantation, including McIntosh Landing, New Savannah, Millers Trace, Mill Creek and Ashton Pines, to Crooked River Elementary School.A total of 114 current Crooked River Elementary School students that live in Old Jefferson, The Pines Apartments, Harbor Pines neighborhood and those on the east side of Martha Drive would be moved to St. Marys Elementary School if the rezoning proposal is approved as is.And finally the board has proposed to move 52 Sugarmill Elementary School students that live in the Colerain Oaks neighborhood to Mary Lee Clark.The proposed rezoning will sit on the table for 30 days before coming to a vote, as all school system policies do. During this time, public hearings will be held at the various affected schools. Dr. Will Hardin, superintendent of schools, invited concerned parents to attend the hearing and voice their opinions on the proposal. The board is expected to vote on the issue at the April 9 board meeting.
TRSP Review:
This is called economic integration of schools. In theory the idea of this plan is to put rich smart kids in with the "dumb" poor kids. This in itself is a double edged sword. As studies do show some improvement in the poor "dumb" kids when mixed with smart rich kids, but it also shows that the rich kids grades slip at the same rate as the increase in poor kids.
What king of affect does this have on the kids? Is it really the kids? Some schools with nothing but poor kids do quite well. Why? Maybe they have good teachers? Maybe they have good parents?
Why does the school system not call it what it is? Does sound better to use the term free and reduced lunch kids opposed to poor kids?
Here is a link for more info on economic integration of schools, or just google economic integration of schools.
http://www.tcf.org/Publications/Education/economicschoolintegration.pdf
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8 comments:
Interesting study.
Did you notice that less affluent kids do better when placed into a more affluent school while more affluent kid's performance drops if they are placed into a less affluent school.
The study touches on the problem. There is a high inverse correlation between poverty and good behavior. Ditto for he correlation between poverty and student motivation as well as parental involvement.
The poorer studebnt transferred into the more affluent millieu is suddenly exposed to better behavior and more motivation onthe part of his peers. The inverse is true for the kid from the affluent student population going to the impoverished student population.
I think you can clearly see that it would not be fair to the teachers to have a ploicy of putting ALL of the kids from affluent families into one school and ALL of the free lunch kids into another and expecting each to form exactly as well on standardized tests. With some notable and laudable exceptions, that rarely happens in the real world.
To follow up on my original comment, if it makes sense not to put all affluent kids in one school and all "poor" kids in another, then does it not, for the same reason, make good sense to try to even out the percentags of affluent and less affluent in each school?
I am a parent who last year had a household income of 100,000. I was laid off and my husband was seriously hurt. My daughter qualifies for free lunch now. It doesn't mean she is not smart, it doesn't mean she is a behavior problem. To classify attendance zones by the percentage of free/reduced price lunches is ridiculous.
A large number of renters in Laurel Island will qualify for free or reduced. A neighborhood school is just that, for the neighborhood. My family is not part of this fight because the only child left at home is in high school, but for the other parents I understand the frustration. If the school system is not legally able to classify children by learning capabilities why should they be able to classify by financial status?
Any teacher who feels slighted because he/she has a more lower income students in the classroom needs to resign now. Our teachers are paid very top dollar and should not be allowed to pick and choose who they teach.
Madam, aparently, you do not understand the consequences to teachers and principals if a school fails to meet AYP three years in a row. Check it out. While your situation is clearly an exception to the rule, there is irrefutable data which anyone with common sense can readily see confirms that children from lower socio economic circumstnaces, as generally indicated by eleigibility for free / reduced lunches, on average, perform poorly in absolute terms and especially rleative to the performance of children from more affluent socio-economic backgrounds. Sad, but a fact of life. Additional inputs in terms of extra individual attention can only go so far. If mom and dad (or more often just mom or grandma) are not on board with the importance of education, there is little chance that the teachers can fully replace the motivation for success that must be instilled at home.
Let me say this agin. If you can readily see that it would not be fair to either the children or the teachers to put all highly motivated and successful kids in one school and all unmotivated and struggling-to-failing kids in another, then you should be able to see, by extension, that attempts to even out their numbers in any one school follow logically. Statistics also show that children from low income families placed into a school where the majority of the students are from higher incojme families tent to do better than they were doing in prdominantly low income populations. Unfortunately, the inverse is tru also. Ergo, the ideal school has a majority of kids from more affluent families.
I can imagine how Mr. Moreno would be handling this if he was a parent whos child was being bused to a school that he had not chosen for his kids. But, since Mr. Know It All is hoping to become a teacher in the near future, he is backing up any decision the BOE is making> If I had a child in this school system and bought a home in an area just so that my kids could attend a certain school, I would be just as upset as these parents. And, if I had a child that was going to be taught by the likes of Jay Moreno, I would move to another country to keep that from happening. ERGO, the arrogance that propels this man, would never make him a good teacher in any school. It takes passion and understanding and patience to be a good teacher and he lacks all of the above.
Your uninformed comments, motivated by irrational hatred rather than actual knowledge, are diametrically opposed to the reality of the situation. The kids like me, learn from me, and enjoy my instruction. All of my professors are well pleased and impressed with my abilities as are all of the administrators and teachers I've had the pleasure of working with in the local school system over the last three years.
Do you have a particular country in mind?
My comments are well informed by you Moreno. Unlike you I am never motivated by irrational hatred and and my knowledge is right up there with yours old boy. So, keep on giving yourself brownie points and believe all you tell yourself. And yes I do have a particular country in mind. However I will not tell you, I'm afraid you would move there too. I stick by what I believe it takes to be a good teacher and nothing you can say will change my mind. You prove that you lack these qualities each time you comment about anything. However, you just keep on telling everyone just how wonderful you are and they can make up their own minds, just as I did.
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