January 20. 2010 06:47

I am concerned that you did not have a representative sample of the larger Garrison Community at the four Board Workshops, designed to generate these goals. For example, at the last BOE meeting, I attended on 01/06/10, I thought I heard the number of workshop participants at 51. Although I attempted to encourage my friends to attend these four BOE Workshops, sent email and Facebook messages to at least 175 community members, I attended one workshop with primarily GUFSD BOE members, administration, and faculty, with very few parents or community members in attendance. There was simply not an interest from many to attend the four BOE Goals Workshops. Hence, the responses obtained at that one workshop, which I attended, were largely from the Garrison administration, faculty and staff, which I found to be very different from my needs as a parent and those community members without children in the school. Can you please provide a demographic breakdown of the participants who attended the four BOE Goals Workshops in comparison with the number of GUFSD BOE members, administration, faculty, and staff, parents and community members without children in the Garrison School? Also, what is the total number of children in our district attending the public (K-to-12 schools) as well as total number of children attending private schools, again, in comparison with the total number of persons living in our school district? Thank you very much. Nancy Wareham-Gordon

Nancy

January 20. 2010 15:46

Dear Nancy, Thank you for your comment, and thank you for your efforts to increase attendance at our goal-setting workshops. All of us on the Board are grateful to the 51 people who attended 4 workshops, only one of which was mostly faculty. Many people who could not attend did email or call a BOard member with thoughts. Certainly we feel that we received lots of thoughts, ideas, and concerns - including those of community members without children in the school even though most of those individuals did not attend workshops. Feedback from 51+ peope is feedback we would not have had otherwise, and we are grateful to them (and to you) for attending and sharing their feedback. The goals are the Board's, and ultimately reflect our own thinking as well as the input we received.

As far as demographics go, we have roughly 400 students K-12, and the Garrison School District includes roughly 1300 households with approximately 2500 adult residents. We do not know the total number of children attending private school. The majority of Garison residents do not have children in the school. I do not believe we have "demographic information" on all the workshop participants, but having attended 3 of the 4, most were parents.

Thank you again for your interest.

Best regards, Anita

50154

January 21. 2010 22:49

Thanks to the board for publishing the goals. I was glad to see that outdoor education was mentioned, and also interested in the reference to the International Baccalaureate Program which I have previously researched and found impressive.
I attended one of the meetings and it was mostly parents with a few faculty and staff. I don't understand the concern about a representative sample. The meetings were well advertised and they took place at varying times of the day to allow for people's different schedules, so if people didn't attend then it was undoubtedly because they weren't really interested.
This issue came up in the PCNR several weeks ago (Tues Nov 24) with Jim Cannon "discounting the value of the data" because it was "not truly representative" and I have to say I found that comment annoying. Why I wondered did we all file along and share our time and thoughts if we were just going to be discounted later for being parents? Moreover hadn't the board voted amongst themselves to hold these public meetings in the first place and if so then why was a board member turning around and discounting the data after the fact?
I expect I'm missing a wealth of politics underlying this issue, but as a relative outsider the issue of representative sampling at the meetings seems like a red herring. Rather like saying after an election that it wasn't a fair election because lots of people didn't turn up to vote.
Jenny Evans

Jenny

January 21. 2010 23:25

Dear Jenny, Thank you for your thoughts and for participating in the process. The Board does value all the feedback we received. (A newspaper account often does not report all of the nuance of a remark or discussion.)
Thanks again.

Best, Anita

05EE3

January 23. 2010 15:05

I really enjoyed the workshop I attended. It was a very thoughtful discussion and the process allowed for all the comments--both positive and negative--to be turned into constructive suggestions, which I now see reflected in the draft document. I am eager to see many of the goals become more concrete, specific action items. I assume this is what the budget process will hash out. I think a similar open workshop approach to the budget has the potential to yield similarly thoughtful results reflecting community-wide concerns.--Charlotte Rowe

Rowe

January 25. 2010 18:40

Thank you, Charlotte.

Anita

February 14. 2010 19:17

Thank you again to the Board of Ed for providing several workshops to meet the schedules of all constituencies. The workshop I attended was very productive. The board's goals reflect many of the community concerns I heard expressed that night and on other occasions.

Our best resource is our faculty, and so I am pleased to see professional development in the goals. The only way to achieve our desires for individualized and dynamic instruction as well as to take advantage of the small size of our classes is to invest more in the faculty. The most important factor in student success is not class size and it is not technology--it is the quality of the teaching.

Thanks again for soliciting our input,
Marilyn Walker

Walkr