It is certainly correct that parents have not been sufficiently consulted on this matter! The ThoughtExchange survey was laughable! This completely changes teaching in our Middle Schools by shortening the time given to core subjects and introducing a huge number of new electives.

Will teachers really be able to cover all of the required core material with reduced time?

What will happen in math if the second period is omitted?

Is there enough time to plan for quality electives?

As a parent of a fifth grader, who is thus both interested and out of the loop, I would appreciated a little more detail. What are the six required courses? Math, English, Social Studies, PE? And what sort of electives are offered?

WRT the discussion of equity, what if the district required English speakers to take a foreign language? Presumably the students losing one of their electives to ELD already know one; English is effectively their "foreign" language. The degree to which I would support such a proposal is dependent on the answers to the questions above (maybe foreign language is already required?); but I think my son would benefit more from improving his Spanish than a second period of Math.

I hope the district can hire a full-time computer science teacher for each of the middle schools. There are certainly enough companies around here that can help fund it, that along with advanced Spanish middle school classes. This is a chance for the middle schools to even further prepare the kids for an exciting global future.

MV Parent you cannot be serious? The district has already explained Monday morning classes will be shortened, but length of time will expand Tuesday through Friday in core classes, why promote false information?

Furthermore, the survey the District promoted was not laughable, why diminish the outreach? The Task Force recommendation included parents and teachers feedback as to their best recommendation in order to have an elective be offered to English language learners. Why would you impede all students to have an elective? That just seems un-american and too helicopter parent to me.

You need to understand this is public education and it needs to serve the needs of ALL STUDENTS.

Nothing effective will happen in 32-minute class periods. Less instructional time in core subjects for ELDs students will come back to haunt the district. Former Board President Gutierrez was noticeably absent from the meeting. It would appear his lack of understanding of public education, misguided and ineffective political maneuvering and not-so-subtle, behind-the-scene muckracking efforts at Graham have backfired and he is now isolated from the rest of the Board. It's a pity because the ELD students in the district no longer have an effective Board Member in their corner.

@ Graham Parent - Trustee Gutierrez was absent from the January 4th board meeting due to severe weather conditions in the midwest. You may have noticed on the posted agenda for this meeting that there was a 2nd address listed at the top of the agenda. That was the address of the site that Trustee Gutierrez planned to use to link in to the board meeting. Unfortunately Mother Nature got in the way and he was unable to utilize an internet site as he had planned. You may have also noticed that Trustee Gutierrez was diligent in providing written comments to the board president ahead of the meeting on agenda items that he felt needed his input. Trustee Gutierrez continues to be a valued and valuable member of the board team.

@Observer:

Students are losing 15 minutes per class, per week, for a total of 18 lost instructional days each year in all classes. There are longer classes on T-F, but students will have 8 classes total on their schedule and only 6 classes each day (excluding Monday). For an ELA class that is the equivalent of a unit. Students will either a) be losing instruction in 10% of the current course content or b) have 10% more homework in academic classes.

The survey was incomplete and did not address all of the issues that the task force was looking into. In addition, the follow-up survey promoted an "echo - chamber" effect where the results that one was able to assign stars aligned with the views one had originally given.

I sincerely hope that parents and the board show up to ask tough questions about purchasing quality curriculum for electives, how students will be assigned RTI (Response to Intervention) classes, how students are assigned to quality electives, what preparation and support teachers will be given to teach the RTI classes, and what can be done to create a more transparent process that serves ALL of our students.

@Concerned and Watching

Thank you for stating actual facts such as length of instructional time per class.

I find the questions you bring up quite important. After the TTO experience I worry a lot about these details. It was exactly the details of the program and its implementation that caused so much harm in the end to the students by TTO.

The idea of new the programs such as TTO, RTI and cascading schedules are very promising and well intended. However, these programs will only work for all students including ELD, special needs and gifted students, when the administration shows rigorous attention to detail when creating and implementing the new programs.

Good intentions and wishful thinking only doesn't improve our kids education.