June 15, 2006

EDITORIAL

Parent, school dialogue needs work

The Yellow Springs community is blessed with people who care about children. It is blessed with retirees who support school levies and attend school plays even after their own children are long gone. It is blessed with community members who volunteer countless hours to serve on the school board. It is blessed with teachers and administrators who give freely of their time and attention. And it is blessed with strong and involved parents who care about nothing so much as their children’s schools.

So it’s clear that all of the people involved in the controversy around this coming year’s fifth grade class at Mills Lawn are good people. They are people who care about children. But it’s also clear that something went wrong.

Last week three Mills Lawn parents announced at the school board meeting that they are pulling their children out of school. They are doing so because they believe their children are not being well-served by the school; in some cases, they believe their children are being harmed.

The parents are members of the Parents of 2014, a group that came together, as parents will, over coffee and at the playground and found they shared common concerns. The current class of 40 children is unusual in that one out of three in this fall’s fifth grade is identified as a special needs child, a significantly higher than normal percentage. The children are warm and interesting and bright, their teachers have said, but some have difficulty interacting with others. And the many needs of the group can overwhelm any teacher.

Some of the parents volunteered hours each week in the classroom to offer support. Some say they have been trying for years to bring the needs of the class to the attention of the Mills Lawn administrators. Finally, in April, feeling their concerns weren’t heard, they came to the school board. Twelve parents attended the meeting, the largest group of parents in years to address the board. They were polite and articulate. They were thoughtful people with valuable expertise. They offered to write grants, to volunteer, to organize help. Full of enthusiasm, they wanted to be active collaborators in their kids’ education.

Two months later, some of those parents returned to the board last week to say they have given up.

What went wrong?

Perhaps Yellow Springs educators, who work so hard and so successfully at creating good schools, have a hard time listening when something goes wrong. It took far too long for the Mills Lawn administration to address the problem. And when administrators did finally listen to the group’s concerns and threw their energy into addressing the issue, the schools offered what some parents saw as “too little, too late.”

Perhaps most troubling is that many of the group of 2014 parents feel they have been marginalized as troublemakers. And now they are being told that, while they were right to have concerns about their children’s education, they went about addressing those concerns in the wrong way. Now the superintendent has suggested that parent groups shouldn’t bring their concerns to the board, but should instead take them to the Parent Teacher Organization. That looks to some like a way to keep concerned and perhaps angry parents further away from the board.

The Parents of 2014 weren’t perfect. Some other parents stayed away from the group, saying their style was too assertive. But all parents deserve to be heard, even, or perhaps especially, if they are frustrated and passionate. Yellow Springs needs its troublemakers. And it needs school board meetings where its parents, teachers and administrators meet face to face and listen well to each other.

—Diane Chiddister