14. Testimony of Grace Hein:

I live at ------and I'm going to talk really quickly and I think I've lost my track. I'm one of the passionate speakers over and over I tend to be emotional and I know that emotions can be uncomfortable for many people. So I apologize if this makes anyone uncomfortable or if anything that we've done in the past makes you uncomfortable. I think part of the reason why some of us are so emotional is because it involves our children and my goodness like a bear we are sometimes protecting what we believe is right and what is good. I was very surprised by reading the very biased article of the Ketchikan Daily News to hear that you were not going to be surveying the community. When we...I've been to all four of the meetings in the past couple of weeks and one of the first things was community involvement, and approval and support was key to making this work. And so, one of the questions I asked Friday night was what are you going to use to measure that you have the community support behind you. So, I'm fairly surprised that you aren't going to be doing a survey. And also, there were no questions offered that changed your minds or that were of import. Well, they were questions, they weren't comments, they weren't researched based, they weren't opinions. And we really haven't had an opportunity, and this is a poor forum for dialog because you guys don't talk to us. It is a poor forum, but it's what we have so let's work with it. So I have been doing some work on restructuring. I've found a lot of information on the internet. As a matter of fact, I found one organization alone has a list of 32 publications on the subject of restructuring. So, other people have done it. This is from the National Center for Restructuring Education from Columbia University, New York. From the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development there's a whole year book dedicated to restructuring articles by the experts in the field with citations of unquestionable quality. Quickly I would like to read you just two quotations. And the two major points I have to make is one community involvement is important and this quotation is right along that line. "Over the last decade or so the literature on educational change has stimulated school centered change efforts and helped teachers and principals cope better with changes in initiated or imposed from elsewhere. According to this body of work," he gives 12 citations and then moves on, "According to this body of work when educational change falters or fails this may be because the reason for the change is poorly conceptualized or not clearly demonstrated." In this particular instance we might add, communicated cause many of us are still wondering what's going on. "The change is too fast for people to cope with. The change is poorly resourced." I know you've got $17,000 dollars but I'm still not....but still the budget is rather hazy. "There is no long term commitment to the change to carry people through the anxiety, frustration and despair." Change is hard and this community has had a lot of change.

[Time signal....speaker requested 3 more minutes. - permission granted]

"Key staff who can contribute to the change or might be affected by it are not committed. Parents oppose the change because they are kept at a distance from it. And leaders are too controlling".....I'm just going to end with that. Leaders may be a little controlling.

The second quotation was, again from the same source, "The role of parents and communities in educational change effort is under estimated in change literature." My point is that this community needs to be involved more than it has been in order for this to succeed. "So if educational reformers and change agents ignore the emotional dimensions of educational change," again this is from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, "if agents ignore the emotional dimensions of educational change, emotions and feelings will re-enter the change process by the back door." And they've listed what will happen. "Festering resentment undermines and overturns rationally made decisions." I believe that you are rational people. And if this decision is rational, this threatens that decision. "Committee work is poisoned by members with unresolved grudges and grievances. [inaudible) tables of performance don't motivate teachers at the bottom to improve but shame and humiliate them into even greater demoralization. Excessive change demands make the best teachers burn themselves out." And I am a big supporter of the teachers in a big way. "Passive-aggressive leadership that masquerades as rationality and reasonableness engenders only frustration among followers who are exposed to it. And pedagogical changes fail when they do not engage the passions of the classroom," and in this instance the community, " taking our improvement efforts deeper into the emotions of educational change is no easier matter, it's uncomfortable. It means more than getting in touch with our feelings, it means protecting teachers," and I'm inserting here, because this is also a quote, parents, "from over extending themselves through their emotional labor and becoming burned out or cynical as a result. It means reviewing and revising educational reform agendas and the ways in which they are implemented so that they do not negatively affect the emotional labor and the emotional rewards of teaching, for example by making teachers," and I'm again inserting and parents, "feel ashamed, humiliated,disvalued and misunderstood."

My second major point which will be in 45 seconds is, after four rather demeaning public meetings with the administrator I finally figured out, I think I've got it! I think I've got why you're doing this. And again, I believe each of you are rational people and there must be a reason. I was trying to figure this out and Mr. Martin mentioned that we restructure classrooms and my daughter almost got in a restructured....well she is in a restructured kindergarten out at North Point Higgins. When you have too many kids in one room and not enough in another class. So this method will actually allow for an in flux and an out flux of students with the least amount of impact. However, I'm wondering why we're not checking on the reason why there's such a flux. You've got people going out to the home schooling and private schools. Let's find out why they are doing that and bring them back. Bring these people back into the school district. We're in competition let's face it. We're in competition with the home schooling, with the private schools and other school districts. More and more people are leaving this system, why?

[time up]

I actually have some suggestions and I will submit those to you in writing at a later date. And that was the end.

15. Testimony of Debby Patton:

I'm here with three hats. I'll start with the first hat which is as the White Cliff PTA president. We adopted a resolution on January 15th based on a survey that we conducted of our PTA members last school year when this was kind of first being presented and again on January 15th and this is the outcome of the vote we took on January 15th.

"Whereas the White Cliff PTA is concerned about any reconfiguration or restructuring decisions being made without adequate information about the impacts and alternatives being provided to the school board, the parents, the staff, and the public in general; and whereas there has been no comprehensive planning process to facilitate this transition; whereas there is no data supporting the configuration being presented as the preferred method of elementary structure; and whereas, the proposed restructuring negative impacts including extra transitions, less parental involvement, the cost and stress of the change and unforeseen impacts far outweigh the assumed positive effects; and whereas the White Cliff PTA voted on January 15th, 2001, with the majority opposed to restructuring the schools as it was understood.

Therefore, be it resolved the White Cliff PTA does not support the Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District's proposed restructuring plan and asks that the School Board reverse its decision to restructure."

Now my parent hat. I tried to stay open minded to this process and I'm really not a person that's opposed to change. In fact, I'd kind of like to get on board and help kind of facilitate that process. But I feel that this decision has been made with little input from staff, parents and community. It was postponed for a year and I expected some type of a campaign from the district to get people on board, to provide us with information and a comprehensive planning process which included staff and parents. This did not take place. At the meeting hosted by the PTA Council several weeks ago I was disappointed by the presentation by the school district on the restructuring plan. I felt little information was provided and it appeared as poor planning and no formal budget was outlined for the cost. Two weeks later, we have a time line and poster boards identifying the goals behind restructuring. All of these goals could be accomplished without the reconfiguration of students by grade level. What concerns me even more is that I have about the same knowledge base as staff and teachers do and they should be on board even more than parents.

Now I'll wear my counselor's hat. If you go through with the restructuring, higher functioning parents and children will adjust and adapt during the transition process. These children will still be seen as successful students and these parents will still be involved in their child's education at some level. I'm more concerned with lower functioning families. These children have less parental involvement and for some of these children, school is the most stable environment they have. How will these children adapt to the transition between 3 and 4 teachers a day, several elementary school in their elementary years and even more through adolescence? Who's going to identify the needs of these children before even half the school year is over? When one of the goals was to address the dropout rate, what's going to be done to make sure these children do not fall through the cracks? I've been providing substance abuse and domestic violence services to this community since 1989. Unfortunately, Ketchikan has always had high incidence rates of both substance abuse and domestic violence. I currently provide a state funded batters intervention program for offenders convicted of domestic violence. Over the past year we have had 50 individuals court ordered to this program. It might not seem that much but when you compare these figures to Juneau's numbers, which is 15, for the same timeframe you get a little bit different picture. 96 percent of these individuals have substance abuse problems and 82 percent of these people had minor children in the home. How is the restructuring plan going to increase their attendance, increase their parental involvement, increase their sense of identity in a school setting with so much transitioning occurring. It's hard to be concerned about your reading level when your mother was abused lasted night. It's hard to be involved with your child's education when your basic safety needs are not being met, it's hard to identify these children's needs when they are one child among 200 of the same grade level in the same school for a short period of time. In a K-6 format they have more of an opportunity to feel bonded with their teachers and other adults and their peers because the numbers are 50 to 60 rather than 200. Feel more familiar in the setting because they have been there longer and more referrals are likely to made to the school social workers. Granted the school district's primary function is education, it's these issues that are preventing these students from being successful. The two primary goals are to address dropout rates and to increase educational achievement primarily in reading and how is this plan going to reach this particular population?

[Speaker notified that time is just about up..]

As elected officials I ask that you be the barometer to the community and please be open to the input regarding this decision. My personal experience is the majority is opposed. You've been elected to represent the masses for this reason I ask that you reconsider your decision to restructure the elementary schools and also I appreciate your time and efforts. I'm sure you've got more things to do with your time than sit here and listen to us. So I don't know if you need copies of the...Thank you.

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