I attended the RISD school board meeting this evening. The meeting was long & boring! Basically you’re given 3 minutes to give your speech. The board members are not allowed to comment on what you have to say. I basically let them know about the group & how it was time for a change & we would like to see gifted education on the agenda soon. They did let me know that they will be having several upcoming meetings & public forums in the process of hiring the new superintendent. They welcomed us to attend those meetings & I think we should have a presence at each of those meetings as well as the board meetings.
I was approached after the meeting by a writer from the DMN so that was exciting. He took all of my contact info & wrote down the website so maybe we’ll get some publicity out of it as well.
On another note, I finally cornered my school board rep & told her I was mad at her for not returning any of my phone calls over the summer. Of course she had a death in her family, lost her job & has been out of town most of the summer. Too bad, she could have at least called or emailed quickly letting me know she got my messages. She was nice about it though & we had a fairly long conversation about the fact that the gifted program needs to be changed. Whether it be clustering the kids so they can move at their own pace or changing the magnet schools so that we have a g/t magnet or even having a school within a school, something needs to change. She seems to think that clustering is illegal & I said there’s no way it can be illegal if other districts are doing it. After all special ed kids get to be clustered.
We’ve got a long way to go, but at least we’re getting started. I’ll be curious to see if any of our board members attend on the 26th.
We all know there is work to do. But just look at where the district is in spite of an inept board and their mistakes in the choices THEY made in superintendents. Let your voice be heard in choosing Patti Keiker to make the changes that will lead this district above and beyond current achievements and not let the board impede progress with more of their blunders.
http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpresult/691610-209402
So I am curious, did any of the board bother to come to the meeting on the 26th?
In speaking with Lanette Greenhaw, the board was already committed to another couple of functions. The weather was crappy Mon. night so attendance was very low. Joyce Wilson was there to help answer questions for Rita. Hopefully we can get her to speak again as a parent ed venue. I just met today with CFB ISD’s advanced academic studies person & she gave us some of their programs’ literature. I then passed it on to Lanette tonight at the community meeting. We’ve got a long road ahead of us, but I think we’re making progress in baby steps.
Please continue discussion on the forum: link