PEORIA -- Another Peoria District 150 School Board meeting -- another school gym with a poor sound system, hard metal chairs, other issues including inconsistent meeting times. The April 23 meeting began at 6 p.m., and public comments were limited to three minutes each.
Someone wishing to speak must sign up before the meeting, so those that don't know the meeting has been moved from its usual 6:30 p.m. time to 6 p.m. and come then are out of luck.
A much anticipated public hearing on principals who have been 'reassigned,' e.g. ousted from their jobs, will now take place on Monday April 30, the board announced, and removed it from the agenda. The time and place are to be posted later on the District's website. Some in the audience had come to hear that event.
The board meeting, at Woodrow Wilson School, was almost 15 minutes late getting started, then three presentations later -- presentations that should take place at school auditoriums instead of the board meeting -- the public comments finally began.
I have been recording these comments since the board took them off live television, two years ago. It could webcast the meetings -- a good exercise for students! -- but doesn't do it. So the recording is below, as usual.
Several teachers spoke about "the evaluation tool," the new state-mandated way to get rid of teachers, including those with tenure, that someone decides to fire.
The district's teachers are working with administrators to develop it, apparently a source of tension. Several talked about the need to collaborate on it, One said it should be unique to Peoria, and not like those in North Carolina or California, a sly reference to the superintendent's previous positions.
Activist Terry Knapp talked about the half-dozen properties on Prospect Road that the district bought a few years ago and took off the tax rolls, then learned a school could not be built at the site.
Only one is now rented, and the rest have deteriorated and need to be torn down, Knapp said he has learned. "It's beyond me as a taxpayer" why the district has "let them sit there," he added.
He also questioned the many new lawyers that keep appearing at District 150 board meetings, and the legal bills to come from ousting tenured teachers without due process.
Activist Sharon Crews made an amusing discovery: the district's recent 'report' to the public called Remarkable Times had over 63 grammatical errors, breaking rules that even high school juniors must know to pass state exams. She distributed her report to the board, and her comments will be published here later.
Peoria Federation of Teachers vice president Lana Myers said the evaluation tool should not be made a 'gotcha' event, which "will add to the climate of fear and bullying in our district."
PFT president Bob Darling said the tenured teachers let go should be rehired, and that the state legislation might be amended to allow this. "The criteria was not to eliminate due process for tentured teachers with unsatisfactory evaluations," he said. Instead they are to be offered remediation.
One teacher riffed has 19 years in the district. "You can't give her 90 days to do remediation?" he asked. "I think the state will fix this law."
In her response to the comments, Supt. Grenita Lathan said the evaluation tool was not to be a "gotcha" tool. "We will continue to collaborate," she said.
An audio recording of the public comments is posted here.
-- Elaine Hopkins
Here are Sharon Crews's comments:
Every day all District 150 students are taught and tested again and again to determine if they demonstrate the appropriate grade-level mastery of the English language. District 150 has spent thousands of dollars on programs to track the success and failure of these students.
There is no doubt that one of the primary motivations behind these purchases is to collect data to be analyzed in regards to instruction and, therefore, to “Pinpoint” those teachers whose students are not mastering the English language according to expectations. This data will undoubtedly be used to give more and more unsatisfactory evaluations to teachers. Even more principals will be given the ax based on test scores when no other trumped up charges can be validated.
Clearly, No Child Left Behind has made mastery of the English language a high priority. When, may I ask, will the personnel on Wisconsin Avenue be expected to exhibit mastery of the English language?
It doesn’t matter who writes the articles for the Remarkable Times. Clearly, no one on Wisconsin Avenue edits or proofreads the articles before this newsletter is distributed throughout the Peoria area. The quality of this newsletter is a direct reflection on the administrative staff on Wisconsin Avenue. We do not need any Pinpoint programs to question whether or not the District’s very expensive hierarchy has a mastery of the English language. If anyone was embarrassed by the newsletter, surely the public would never have seen an April newsletter with over 63 errors, breaking at least 25 grammar rules for which high school juniors are held responsible on the ACT test. There errors include punctuation and capitalization errors, run-on sentences, sentence fragments, misplaced modifiers, incorrect pronoun usage, and very poor syntax, in general.
As a former English teacher, Dr. Lathan, the buck stops at your desk, and I do not understand how you allow this error-ridden publication to represent District 150 and you personally.
Also, what if students read the newsletter? Aren’t you undoing everything teachers are teaching?
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