Attending a school board meeting is always an interesting endeavor. The meetings are frequently boring, and the school board could waste 45 minutes debating whether to extend the meeting by 5 minutes, but there are moments when the gloves come off and the fireworks begin. The January 7th meeting had one of those moments during Grant Lattin’s comment time.
Mr. Lattin is the school board member from Occoquan District and tonight he more or less characterized the parents who have spoken against Investigations a handful of petty liars. He accused those parents of misrepresenting the facts and spreading misinformation, said that they only represented the concerns of 6 families, and only came from four schools.
With all due respect, Mr. Lattin has no clue what he’s talking about.
The January 7th board meeting exposed one important point – the parents involved in the fight for traditional math in PWC haven’t done the best job at making sure the school board knows how they feel. Let’s change that, today.
I believe that there are sympathetic board members who would support an alternate, traditional track in PWC schools, but they will only support it if they believe there is sufficient support for such a program from parents. If you can attend the next board meeting on Wednesday, January 21st at 7PM then please go and let them know how you feel. If you don’t want to speak then simply stand with another speaker when they address the board to show your support for what they’re asking for. If you can’t go then please send the board an email and let them know how you feel.
You don’t have to say much – something like “My name is XYZ. I am a resident and parent of children in PWC. The county math program is not meeting my child’s needs. I believe a program based on a traditional text would better meet their needs and ask you to support creating such a program. Thank You ” – is more than sufficient.
You can send an email to each board member with the email addresses listed below or clink on this link which will take you to the PWCS school board and clink on the “send an email to all the board members link.
Here are the board member’s email addresses:
Gil Trenum – gtrenum@pwcs.edu
Dr Michael Otaigbe – motaigbe@pwcs.edu
Denita Ramirez – dramirez@pwcs.edu
Julie Lucas – jlucas@pwcs.edu
Betty Covington – bcovington@pwcs.edu
Grant Lattin – glattin@pwcs.edu
Don Richardson – drichardson@pwcs.edu
Milt Johns – mjohns@pwcs.edu
Let us know in the comments if you send a message. We’ll make sure the board receives the list.
To speak at a Prince William County school board meeting you need to contact the clerk by Noon the day of the meeting or sign up at the door by 6:30 PM. You’ll need to tell the clerk what you want to talk about and give her your name, address, and phone number. Her contact information is:
Email: pwcscleark@pwcs.edu
Phone Number: (703) 791-8709
School board meetings are held at the Edward L. Kelly Leadership Center located at 14715 Bristow Road in Manassas. From the PW Parkway (Rt 234) turn onto INDEPENDENT HILL RD and follow for 0.4 miles. Turn left onto BRISTOW RD (VA-619) and follow for 0.6 miles. End at 14715 Bristow Rd Manassas, VA 20112-3945.
PWC may never dump Investigations but the county may allow an alternate instructional track based on a traditional text provided there’s enough interest. Would you be interested? Let us know!
Yep. That’s what Superintendent Waltz said . Only 4 parents oppose Investigations so the school system doesn’t have to do anything.
A school board member was heard stating that the county had spent too much money to dump Investigations.
A local school administrator was heard commenting regarding Investigations that when our children get to middle school, “at least they’ll all be stupid together”.
School board members and county staff deferred making decisions regarding Investigations and an alternate instructional track until after the SOL test results were available in August of 2008. Those results are in as are the SDMT results for the same year. Many of you may have heard the school systems reviews of what those results demonstrated. But are those glowing reviews justified?
One of the questions parents kept asking was how Investigations was selected. It has a controversial record, meets fewer SOLs than any other text, isn’t approved for use in Grade 5, carries a heavy professional development requirement for teachers, requires the purchase of expensive materials, and represents a fundamental change in what the county teaches, when it teaches it, and how. All of that caused many parents to wonder how Investigations was selected and whether the board was prepared for the controversy that they should have known was coming.
One of the parents leading the fight against Investigations set out to learn just that. He submitted a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the county to obtain information regarding how the text was reviewed, selected, and recommended to the school board. That request revealed a number of interesting things.
Several Years ago PWC adopted a controversial curriculum for use in county elementary schools. The program is based on the Investigations in Number, Data, and Space text series which was developed by TERC and is know as Investigations, Math Investigations, TERC, or TERC Investigations (www.TERC.edu).
The new curriculum follows the constructivist or reform philosophy of education which states that children learn best when they study broad concepts and discover computational strategies on their own as opposed to following standard procedures and practicing learned skills (a task commonly referred to by supporters of reform math as drill and kill). My objection to the program PWC is providing hinges entirely on how the text series the county selected approaches mathematics and how school administration has mislead the public regarding the program and it’s accomplishments.
These topics and others are discussed in more detail in other articles.
