News and Views

Hello Everyone,

I am writing to you because I am concerned about the state of the enrichment programs in the Elementary School and Middle School. At Friday’s School Meeting it was confirmed that funding for DI and the after school woodworking programs are cut for next year. I think that the board could have made different decisions especially in light of the NECAP results that showed while our kids scored better than the state on average in science, the scores were very low. At the same time Dr. Cascadden showed that enrollment in the schools will be dropping by half over the next few years, spending $60K to build more parking spaces is a greater priority than funding enrichment in the early years of education. I wrote a letter to each School Board member, Dr. Cascadden and Principals Gibbens and Spofford prior to the School Meeting. None of them acknowledged my letter.

I’m not going to try to change the outcome of any of the meetings, but if you share my concern that the values shown in the budget are inconsistent with the values of at least a significant part of the community seeking academic enrichment for our kids I would appreciate knowing – it’s not in my nature to be confrontational, but it is my nature to try to fix problems that I see. An interest in the School Board is not in my future, I have enough on my plate between family and business, but I do want to do something to make a lasting contribution for our children.

I am thinking that our community needs something akin to the Bow Athletic Club for academic enrichment. BAC has been a great way for kids to have the opportunity to discover different sports and develop their athletic potential. I think it’s possible for us to do something similar from an enrichment point of view. If we pool our resources and talents, we’ll have more to offer the community, too.

I am pretty booked up with DI activities until the States at the end of this month, but email always works well for me in the meantime. If you are interested in getting together in early April to start some brainstorming I would be happy to coordinate these activities. If you’re not interested, just let me know and I won’t bother you. If you think someone else would be interested in participating, please pass around the email and let’s build up the network.

Thanks very much for your time and consideration. This could be really fun!

Best regards,
Sharon Eng

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 5:05 pm and is filed under School Info, Your Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.