12. Testimony of Gigi Pilcher:
Hi. I am the parent of six children
none of whom are enrolled in this school district. I had two
children graduate. I had one child drop out and I have 3 that
are enrolled in the PACE Charter school through the Craig School
District which is the ultimate in parental choice and parental
concern over curriculum and parental concern over the size of
the classroom. It was not something that was necessarily my first
choice but the fact of having gone through a lot of things in
past history with this district was something that I and some
of the other parents felt at the time we needed to do. However,
I do care about what happens in this school district. I am a
tax payer. But more than anything I'm concerned for a lot of
the children whose parents aren't here, won't be here. and you'll
never see them here. I concerned for the fact that back in 1990,
1991 and 1992 I was very active in PTA meetings. I remember going
to several, two at Schoenbar where I stood up and read off the
fact that 70 percent of Alaska native students in this district
drop out of school. I remember going to Kayhi to a PTA meeting
and standing up and reading off the same statistics. Sadly I
don't remember any PTA groups coming forth to the school board
at that time with any kind of petition expressing concern over
the high percentage of dropout rate of Alaska native students.
Summarily, in speaking in terms of children with special needs,
which I believe that the restructuring is going to be an asset
for those children, I can annotatedly tell you that my niece
started out in the preschool classroom at White Cliff at the
age of three and went there for one year. Then was moved the
next year to Houghtaling. The following year was bussed out to
North Point Higgins. The following year went back to White Cliff.
The son of a co-worker was also in a preschool special needs
classroom, the same thing. Those children will be best served
by a restructuring of a K-2 in that they won't have to be moved
around from building to building, they'll be in one building
where the services will be available. Obviously, a lot of parents
of kids that this has happened to aren't going to be here to
speak up or to speak out so I guess I'll be their voice for them
tonight. I guess part of the thing that I've heard tonight and
have been hearing kind of disturbs me and I agree in a perfect
world it's great if we can all reach consensus. I guess I must
have lived on a different planet the last year and a half because
I guess I knew that this restructuring was going forth and it
was real clear to me that it was going to happen. So I'm not
sure, you know like I said maybe I'm on a different planet than
the rest of you but it was real clear to me that it was going
to go forth and happen. I attended a lot of meetings. I've listened,
I've watched meetings, it was real clear to me that it was going
to happen. It was put off for a year so that a plan could be
developed and brought forth but there was no doubt that it was
going to happen. I guess one of the things that I want to say,
it's sorta reminiscent if you left it up to the parents, the
school boards and the people back in the 50s and 60s in terms
of desegregating schools in the south I'm not sure that you would
have had people there in favor of breaking the barrier then.
I believe it took troops and the United States Marshals in order
for that to happen. And I guess I hope it doesn't come to that
here in Ketchikan. I know a lot of people talked about asset
building and how important it is. I guess I have my own concerns
about asset building for all children. A lot of parents and kids,
I should say a lot of kids have parents who haven't the luxury
of a choice of choosing whether to send their kids to Valley
Park or where ever. There's a segment of kids that get moved
around a lot from school to school by virtue of the fact that
their parents are evicted from where they live. They may live
in town one month and get evicted then live out north of town
the next month. There's all these people, maybe they're in the
minority I guess. But I think that's one of the things that I
like about the proposed restructuring as it looks like it's going
to be something that's best for all the children, not just my
child or your child, but something that's going to be best for
all children. And I really hope that people will try to keep
an open mind on listening as other people talk instead of making
some of the rude comments that I've heard tonight and at some
of the other meetings. One thing I guess I want to say is perhaps
maybe Mr. Martin's new motto ought to be a quote by the Chief
Justice Earl Warren, "Everything that I did in my life that
was worth while I caught hell for." Thank you.
12. Testimony of Lani Hill:
Hello. I live at ---- I'm starting
to get a little exasperated with the people talking about the
impolite and rudeness of the parents and teachers in the audience
when it seems that the one thing that the school board has forgotten
is that all parents have children and most parents or a lot of
parents, I would have to say most parents have at least one person
in the family, that's one adult who's working. So to have a meeting
that are prior to 6 o'clock when you've barely gotten home and
you somehow have to get your kids fed and their homework done
and all of that is a little unreasonable to expect us to participate.
So if we missed some meetings in the past, perhaps it would be
a good idea to have them at a time when people who work and who
have children could be there. Furthermore, to have meetings where
you do not provide child care has made it impossible for me these
last couple of weeks to read to my children for two weeks. One
of my children was the second place reader of her school in the
March of Dimes contest for reading last year and she was only
in kindergarten. The first place person I think was in 6th grade.
Now she's had to hand in two weeks of reading journals with nothing
on them cause I've been so busy trying to participate here and
you're making it rather difficult for me to do that. Furthermore,
when we do come we keep getting these flyers that say your input
is important. Well how can that be when every single comment
that's all the way through the meetings, if we do get to comment,
is squashed with well we're going to do this anyway so everything
you've said is pretty much trashed. I haven't seen any evidence
of any surveys of parents of children who are presently in school.
And speaking of polite audience members, aren't these two kids
about the politest you've ever seen? And this is their fourth
meeting in two weeks. So I mean, there are some polite audience
members. The Bakers sent this message. They have 3 kids in our
public schools right now. They will all be gone next year and
they're going to be in the home school Alyeska program. So their
funding will be gone from this community. Furthermore, as far
as money, it seems that a lot of this is about money and it makes
a certain amount of sense to have the kids in the schools the
way you have restructured it so that there's no competition between
the schools resulting in so many kids at one school that the
others decrease in population and therefore would have their
funding cut. However, I think that competition is a good thing
I mean that's from wince magnet schools came. Competition tends
to bring out the best in schools in general and also provides
choice and I don't think that funding really has, even when it's
been increased, has been noticed to be that helpful because it
is so little and because those who are the most affected by the
funding are not involved in how it's dispersed. You know, it's
certainly not parents and teachers, who I think are the experts
about the schools and certainly about my children. I can't consider
you experts about my children because you don't know who they
are. Now you do. And you've never....most of you don't seem to
even have children that are in the schools right now. My parents
are both professors and yes I could have gone to private schools
all my life but they believed in the public school system. So
that's where we went. But a lot of my friends did go to private
schools and they did very well. In fact they did better than
I did in college initially until I got the hang of it. And the
difference between their schools and our schools is that they
had more teachers per student. That's how they chose to use their
extra funding. And I constantly hear, well you can't just throw
money at a problem. Well, why not? Let's try that. I don't think
it's been tried. And we could get some money. We have coming
up a vote for, what I consider to be a port fee which is done
in many cities where they have tourists. And here we're calling
it a head tax, which I think is a misnomer which is probably
why people don't want to vote for it cause the t a x word. That's
one of those three letter words that ends with x that really
shakes people up. I think we should just rename that and then
just let that money go to our children's education. We haven't
tried that yet. And this time instead of being allocated by district
administrators, let it be by the true experts of these children
which are the parents and teachers. Cause that's..... I mean,
like my parents, my father has a PhD. in elementary education,
but he did not presume to tell his mechanic how to fix his car.
Just because he has lots of degrees in one subject doesn't mean
that he's the expert on something else. Nor would he also presume
to be more of an expert on that mechanics family, his children
or his community. We are the experts on our children, we the
parents, we the teachers. My teachers of my children know when
my kids aren't feeling well or doing well. They know very well.
Teachers in the higher grades are looking forward to my children
being in those grades already and I'm certainly going to miss
that. And as far as this difference philosophically, my husband
is very polite he didn't want to get into philosophical difference.
But it does seem that there is some tendency towards a back to
the basics movement and I would say going back to the basics,
I don't think they had back in those days when there was more
focus on reading and writing and arithmetic, I don't they had
this ratio of 30 to 1 students to teachers, or 27, or 25, or
22 students to teachers. I think they were pretty much traditionally
multi-aged classrooms. I don't think there was a school board.
I think teacher's opinions were respected and their guidance
was certainly respected in how their schools were run. So if
we're going to go back to the basics, let's consider some of
those ideas. And, I think that's all I pretty much have to say
without being rude. Thank you.
Acting Board President Pickrell:
I'm just going to ask this very
quickly. We've been taking testimony for about an hour on restructuring,
can I see a show of hands of how many more people want to speak
specifically on restructuring. Okay. At this point then what
I would say is that I am going to have Dorothy start timing people
and the maximum that we will allow you to speak is 5 minutes
because we have so many more people and we do have other business
to take care of this evening. So I would ask you that you limit
your comments to five minutes.
Comment
On Restructuring
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