The Orange County School Board meets tonight at 7:00 at 200 E. King Street, Hillsborough, NC.
The meeting agenda can be found here: http://www.orange.k12.nc.us/board/agenda.htm
Public comments come early in the meeting and the HES/CES merger discussion is scheduled for 8:55 pm.
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3 comments:
The board meeting was quite interesting, yet very frustrating. I think the majority of the Board members have their minds made up regarding the merger.
It sure feels like an uphill battle for us. It think we still need to push the flawed data line, as well as Al Hartkopf's insistance that they exhaust all avenues before using the merger as a last resort.
I agree that the meeting last night was interesting and frustrating. I also got the impression that many of the board members are not open to exploring any other options. I will be writing letters to the board and the administration expressing my opinions and trying to offer some possible solutions (as soon as I can digest this and gather my thoughts properly). Depending on the response I receive I may take it further than that, but I believe in being fair and hearing them out. I intend to demand proof, on paper, as to what has been/is being done to help CES. My gut tells me they will not be able to provide such proof.
Seven years ago when my oldest daughter was starting Kindergarten she was districted to CES (we are now districted to Pathways). At that time we took a strong look at CES and rather quickly realized that they were struggling to provide a proper education to the children. Hence our decision to apply to HES. Therefore, this is obviously NOT a new problem regardless of what the "test score" numbers indicate. We all know that these scores are not the only indicator of successfully educating these children. Just because the school system has chosen to have blinders on all these years does not justify using HES as the only solution/scapegoat. I find it very interesting that this has become an "emergency" only when someone's feet are being held to the fire. ALL children deserve the best possible education we can provide. Fudging numbers does nothing to address this, it only serves to make "the system" look better.
I certainly hope that the board and OCS administration realize that they work for US and subsequently all our children. I intend to demand they do the right thing for these children (not that it will necessarily do any good, but I feel it is my duty to try).
Background: We are relatively new to the public school system. #1 entered at grade 8 after private schooling. Things are great for #1 now. #2 is a potential HES rising K...fallback to Pathways. We are comfortable with both schools. We preferred HES based on fairly extensive research, interviews, visits, etc. We have been accepted to HES and are now questioning our decision based on recent merger discussions with CES. It is fundamentally incomprehensible that the board can conceive that a school of choice can merge with a bounded school. We recognize the problem the board is trying to solve. We can't comprehend the proposed solution.
Question: We cannot find anywhere on the district website or other web resources any information on the current board members term interval information/areas they represent. We would also like a rundown/posting of previous issues each member has voted upon. Does anyone have a pointer to such information? We're feeling unrepresented and are trying to get a sense whether this is is normal.
Thanks
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