SP-EYE: We received an open letter to the school board/district administration/community pointing out once again the complete lack of common sense of the school board's boundary decision.
In this follow-up, we learn that there are at least 15 open seat at Bird school. 4 parents applied to allow their younger child to stay at Bird with their older sibling who was "grandfathered". 1 was accepted. 3 were denied. THIS is connectedness?
Back in March the school board made a decision to change a school boundary that affected about 38 children attending CH Bird Elementary. This was a very contentious issue that created a significant amount of stress on the affected parties and created distrust in the school board and school district.
Recently interviews were conducted with a number of candidates to fill a vacated School Board Position. During the interview process the School Board President asked each candidate “Is the school boundary issue over?” All of the candidates responded, “Yes”.
Now as the school year approaches and the student’s class assignments have been made a spin off of the school boundary change has come to light and it has re-opened the wound and should leave anyone with school aged children in a state of
disbelief.
As part of the Boundary change the District has appropriately allowed students that will be entering 5th grade to remain at their former school. That makes sense since who would want any student to have three different schools in three years if you could reasonably avoid it. But what about the younger siblings of these students? Well the district has decided that these younger siblings need to go to their new school and not where their grandfathered sibling is going! Apparently this is the district’s “policy” yet no such policy exists anywhere in writing.
In the case of the students affected by the recent boundary change well, there are four grandfathered 5th grade students returning to CH Bird who have younger siblings. One of the younger siblings was allowed to return to CH Bird under the Voluntary Placement process while the other three were told that they had to go to their new school because there was room for them there. Voluntary placement requires that the “home school” be full at the needed grade before the district will consider the request. Parents of the remaining three students tried several different approaches to get the District to understand their concerns and even though there were over 15 empty classroom seats that could accommodate these three children, their requests were denied. The district defended these denials based on “policy” yet no policy exists on Grandfathered students and their siblings.
So what does this mean? Whatl I do know that there will be more school boundary changes occurring in the future. I also know that there will likely be grandfathered students who have younger siblings who will be faced with the same dilemma. So in the absence of common sense I guess there needs to be a written policy that spells out specifically how the district should address the placement of grandfathered student’s younger siblings. In the absence of that we will have to rely on the districts judgment which frankly is way off base on this issue.
I have heard the District Administrator tout the benefits of “connectedness” many times. Well, as long as the district is going to have a “policy” of separating siblings how can he ever hope to achieve the level of connectedness that he is striving for? To heck with family and sibling relationships. To heck with showing compassion to parents and children who’s requests are reasonable, attainable and in the spirit of “connectedness.” The school board made a decision and the district administration is going to implement it no matter what the cost!
Now that the school boundary wound has been reopened with this demonstrated lack of compassion I guess it’s fair to say that the “school boundary issue” is not over. This recent decision by the district to separate these three siblings clearly shows that some district officials are living in the state of “Disconnectedness”.
Name Witheld to protect them from retribution
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