Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Windsor Locks Superintendent Places Unfair Burden On Working Families

A couple of days ago we received an end of the year letter from our son’s principal.  In this letter there was a small paragraph informing us that next year our children would be dismissed from school 1 hour early every Monday throughout the school year.  The reason given for this; “The teachers can spend time in professional learning about your children’s progress.”

After investigating and getting an earful from parents in town, I found out that the Board of Education approved this new policy.  When you are talking about a sweeping policy change, I think it would be prudent for the Superintendant to notify Parents before he presented this to the Board of Ed.  Parents would have had the opportunity to speak to the Board of Ed Members before they voted.

For years we were told that the correlation of teacher-student contact time increases so will the grades?  With an erosion of that quality time we lose precious opportunities of teacher student interaction.

Teachers should be doing enrichment training outside the core school day window not during prime time teaching hours.

I wrote Superintendant Sweeny a letter explaining the impact and hardships his policy was placing on families.  I explained that in these tough economic times that it is career suicide to ask your employer for 30 early dismissals.  Superintendant Sweeny’s answer to this is,  We are hopeful moms and dads will work with family, neighbors and friends for that one hour for approximately 30 weeks that is why we notified our community as soon as it was approved.” 

What this policy appears to be is a cheap and easy way for the Windsor Locks School System to save money on substitute teachers, and place the burden on the backs of the people that voted for a $400,000 budget increase.  I urge the Board of Education members to reverse their decision, and I hope all parents in town will attend Thursdays Board of Ed meeting at 6:00pm at the High School.

5 comments:

  1. You are absolutely right! The people of this town approve an education budget increase and it gets turned around so the town will save money, the children will lose education hours and besides extra taxes the parents have to pay extra child care expenses. hmmm...something doesn't add up here.

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  2. I too would like to invite everyone to attend the BOE meeting on Thursday, June 23, 2011. Please come to hear the rationale for the decision to provide teachers time, to discuss with their colleagues, student achievement and individual successes.

    Wayne Sweeney
    Superintendent

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  3. Will the teachers be required to stay at the school for that hour or will they be allowed to leave an hour early if they don't have anything to "Discuss"?

    I think their reasoning is a crock. These same teachers have no problem discussing your children outside of school not taking in consideration who may be around when they do it. I've been to several personal functions where the teachers have discussed students with other parents around.

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  4. Very nice blog, if you post something that constructively disagrees with the author it doesnt get posted.

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  5. I have published every comment except for one. That comment incorrectly stated the the increase to the school budget was $200,000.

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