Are Our Schools In Crisis?: Not Another Pilot Program!

Some opportunities ARE really PIE in the sky ideas for many reasons. School districts should beware of stretching too hard at the seams. If teachers are rationing paper and the children do not have textbooks, you don't put up a $14 thousand or $19 thousand dollar tent and let it stand from Monday to Sunday. Unless you really need the money, why would you jump at every pilot program or grant that surfaces? It is time to take care of home. Straighten out home and students from other towns will want to attend your school choice without bribes of special treatment and separation from the general school population.

Parents also get really sick of being told that their children are being used as guinea pigs again. We take programs and never evaluate the effectiveness of them. The last thing we need is another program. Englewood jumps on every single grant that is offered. Our Board of Education Members are grant junkies. We watched the board jump on an offer today that is clearly not for us, because of the distressed  state of the district. They knew that $100,000 was not a lot of money for the participating program. This did not stop them from working out the amount they would have to add to it in order for it to work. $140,000 more. Now do we need money? Something fishy here much? They saw another way to stick it to principals, teachers and parents that they have labeled unruly. They didn't care that our district has just had a major shake up. The middle school is being reorganized. Principal from the Middle school shuffled, Principal from the high school shuffled, assistant principals shuffled from high school, middle school and elementary schools. Two major program changes in curriculum and instruction and a new Superintendent once he figures out how to get the money he wants.

Hello Board of Education. All is NOT well. We should get ourselves together. The last thing we need right now is to subject our students to another Pilot program.

No one expects you to jump on every single grant that is offered. That is fickle, not to mention just plain greedy.

Business is booming. Facilities are beautiful. Profits are high. Scores are down. Academies are NOT numder one in the State. Academies were slated to be evaluated after two years. Did it happen? It was evaluated as part of Dwight Morrow High School. So why does the Board President continue to claim they are the best in the state. I know for a fact that the criteria for admission in Englewood is less rigorous than of the Bergen County Academies. Smoke and mirrors. I am choking right now. Avid has not been evaluated. Ivy has not been evaluated. Small Learning Communities have not been evaluated. Average children with the capacity to achieve are being neglected and some are even being segregated to a place that resembles a reform school in nature. More of them are slated to move into this same environment, because public silence signifies agreement.