Fireworks at the Board Meeting

If you didn't get a chance to see the last board meeting this week, you should!!! It was filled with lots of fireworks and a lot of nonsense from administration.  We will take a few pieces that we think are relevant and the citizens need to know because we know that everything presented looks good.

One thing to mention, can the board find better words to use than " it was a good report"  It seems everything presented by admin is a good report, middle schoolers can put a power point together.  Shows us how out of touch board members are when they cannot critique something intelligently.

Will write something below each portion of video that follows:

There are still problems with the SCAs contrary to what Sorum says.  Time consuming, 1st graders having to bubble, etc. etc.  You can hear some items when Sorum presents.  But Poole here brings the perspective of what teachers are feeling out in the field.  We agree, how about some autonomy for teachers to do what is best for their classroom in collaboration and support from admin.  It's always a top down approach and has been for many years in FWISD.  The SCAs are so fragmented and let's not fool ourselves they are test items that were just broken into three week cycles.  There is nothing different except that 4 questions determine mastery of the standards.  We didn't put Sorum's presentation because it's long and filled with nothing that is going to impact student achievement.  One question the board forgot to ask as we watched this is, within the report where is the data for the standards that were tested and how well did students master them.  We don't need to know passing student rate, we need to know if the students are doing well or not.  No specific data presented just gibberish.  Why do you have all those people sitting there and cannot provide information that we needed to know to see if the SCAs are working and the curriculum.  It was more substance about the giving of the test and what they say are good remarks from staff.  They brought accolades, their data from 11 campuses they visited out of 144.  They didn't even publish which schools they visited, so just giving what data they think makes it look good.  Board comment" that was a good report." blah!

Some uneasiness of the SCAs.  Ms. Paz, you as leadership do have the authority to vote it down not necessarily administrate the SCAs but you adopt policy.  Make a motion that SCAs not be given.

Once again another program change in the middle of the game and bad training from the very people that are being paid extra money, so called consultants.  More teaching to the test as you will see on Fridays, students will be doing STAAR work.  So now they expect teachers to implement after half a day of training and no time to prepare and practice.
See the following teacher comments from a teacher on the Sutherland Blog:

IN THE MEAN TIME THEY EAT LIKE KINGS and we can't afford anything in the classroom

So they can eat and we can't even get a snack with the budget

Avila has no clue what he is talking about.  He forgets that he was elected to the area he represents because he lives in the district.  Wait, he didn't get voted in, the opponent was coerced to drop out.  So technically one vote would have been enough.  What a ridiculous comment.... how can someone not live here and understand how our students live and what we are about.  Living in the castle doesn't help, Avila get out and see the community for once.

You just have to love it!  Money at its best here.. self-interests loud and clear
Mayhem in the FWISD