Hello Challenge Supporters,
Tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday May 10th at 4pm) is
the next School Board meeting. At this meeting the School Board will hear the
first reading of the Middle School Reconfiguration Task Force’s recommendation
on Challenge. At last week’s School Board Study Session, the School Board
decided to narrow the choices being considered to Option 1 and Option 3. Let’s
talk about those options and how they emerged.
The district is currently calling Option 1 “Challenge for
All in grades 6-8”. This name is, in fact, a fairly recent re-branding to
confuse the Northshore Community. Option 1 was originally called “Heterogeneous
Class Groupings” until after the October 13, 2015 Academic Subcommittee meeting.
When the Save Our Challenge group started regularly attending Subcommittee and
task force meetings and testifying at School Board meetings, the district
renamed Heterogeneous Class Groupings “Challenge for All” in an attempt to make
the community think the district was keeping and expanding the challenge
program. In reality, Challenge for All is Mixed Ability, Heterogeneous
classrooms in which the district believes teachers will be able to create and
deliver differentiated instruction for each student in their classroom at a
Challenge-level pace. Any student who is
not ready for challenge-level pace may be forced to take a support class in the
subjects in which they struggle INSTEAD of taking an elective.
Do Not Be Fooled or
Confused! Option 1 would result in the
REMOVAL of the Self-Select Challenge program!
Although, Option 3 was not the first choice voted on by the
community and presented to the School Board in the Save Our Challenge Proposal,
it was the second choice of the parents, students and community members. Option
3 will keep the current Self-Select Challenge Program in grades 7 and 8 while
also keeping the Mixed Ability, Heterogeneous classroom model that is currently
used in our elementary schools for 6th grade. We had hoped self-select
challenge classes would be available for 6th grade as well, but in this
compromise model, the students will still have self-select challenge for
7th and 8th grade. Also, Option 3 was the second choice model voted by the Task Force. Nearly half of the task force members found option 3 to be an acceptable second choice. This is not the preferred model of either side of this debate, but it is an acceptable compromise for both.
Out of the two choices
being considered by the School Board, Option 3 is the model that would Save Our
Challenge Program in grades 7 and 8.
Please attend the School Board meeting on May 10, 2016, at
4pm to urge the School Board to choose Option 3! If you are unable to attend
please send an email to all school board members urging them to vote for Option
3! (sbdistrict1@nsd.org, sbdistrict2@nsd.org, sbdistrict3@nsd.org, sbdistrict4@nsd.org, sbdistrict5@nsd.org )
We're new to the district (moved here in October 2015), but I'm really concerned about this. Could anyone give me more info about what we can do at today's meeting and/or what to expect at the meeting? I would really appreciate it. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi Lauren,
ReplyDeleteThe process is this:
1. Come to the board room at or before 4pm and write your name on the sign in sheet at the back of the room if you want to speak.
2. public comments are in the first part of the meeting. At that time the board president will call each name on the list up to speak one at a time.
3. At that time you have 3 minutes to speak. You can say whatever you want but the board will not answer questions. If a student is speaking sometimes the board likes to ask easy clarifying questions of the speaker to acknowledge them.
That's it! We do not know who will be there to speak or how many speakers there will be. But the more people speak their support for challenge, especially kids, the better! Hope to see you there! I will be walking around with stickers for folks to wear if they choose. Look for me!