Monday's Luncheon-Innovative and Progressive!

So I think I am beginning to get the hang of this! Maybe even actually enjoy this...pressing on, I was able to participate in a luncheon on Monday that consisted of members of the Grant County Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Growth Council, a current member of the School Board, the Superintendent and my opponent. As I stated in a post on another website, this meeting was informative and positive!

This luncheon was such an amazing learning experience and encouragement to me. An encouragement in that I realize how desperate this School Board is for a member such as myself!! My perspective is one that is in no way represented at this time with this current school board. For that matter, it isn't represented by any of the others who are running in this election for this position. They can play the experience card, but with all of the years of cumulative experience they have going for them now, our current situation is still messy.

Is it possible to get down and dirty and right to the heart of it? Throughout this luncheon, no one (other than myself) made mention of the teacher to student ratio or how WE can be instrumental in increasing our enrollment figures. These are issues that speak directly to the heart of the matter. No matter what our teachers' preferred method of teaching is, it cannot flourish in a setting in which the population of a teacher's classroom is too high to maintain an instructional connection with a child. Our teachers' must have the freedom to use whatever particular teaching techniques they specialize in that ensures sound education. How impossible when you have over 20 students in a classroom!

There was talk of innovation and progression, let's do something no other school district is doing: let's limit our class size to no more than 15-18 students per qualified teacher! Wouldn't that be innovative and progressive?!

We absolutely have the power to budget wisely. Let's start doing it. Let's make cuts that are necessary, not optional. We can make Marion Community Schools a school system that is envied for its progress and ability to turn around student academic achievement.

I maintain that we would have such a striking upward swing in our scores within a relatively short period of time that it would be almost senseless not to implement a plan that is as simple as this. We don't need studies to show us these facts, it is a commonsense idea that comes from seeing how these children desperately need to interact with those adults that are responsible for teaching them.

Crazy notion? Lofty ideal? Unobtainable aspiration? I call it innovative and progressive!