How does sending kids to a school that is over 12 miles away from their home when a closer school is only 3 miles away make sense?
The Centralia School District pushed for neighborhood schools, but how is this a neighborhood school? If a child lives in the Galvin area, how is a school on West Summa Street a neighborhood school? The proposed boundaries do not offer neighborhood schools.
I also think that the district needs to rethink its strategy for obtaining higher test results. Going through the agonizing process of people finding new child care, students being split five ways among the district, and moving teachers throughout the schools and taking on different grade levels is hardly the remedy for improving test scores.
The Centralia School District just implemented a new reading program this year, and a great deal of money was spent training each teacher on the new grade level specific curriculum. The district did all of this and will have to retrain most of the teachers next year because of the shift in teachers with the reconfiguration.
The reading program that was chosen has no research to support it, and the head of the reading program who pushed for this specific program has now left the district.
With the reconfiguration plan, only two-fifths of the elementary age children will get to benefit from the new schools, which that are costing the taxpayers in this district significantly. A larger percentage of the elementary age students would benefit from the new schools if the current configuration is kept.
The district has also stated it is going to cost $330,000. This is in addition to the bond for the reconfiguration itself. That seems like a good amount of money that could be implemented into the classroom for extra support for struggling students or for students who are high achievers to have the opportunity for more challenging activities.
The current grade configuration ls not Centralia’s problem
Jennifer Snider
Centralia
