It has been a while since my last blog. We are in the middle of a HUGE transition at our church.
Next week we are changing our name and re-introducing ourselves to the community as CONNECTION CHURCH.
This has come after three years of preparation and we are very excited to see what God will do.
Part of the reason for the name change is to better identify with how we relate...to God, to each other and to our community. In the interest of community relations, we have had a difficult situation occur this week regarding our school system. I personally did not want to divide my focus during the transition we are facing, but considering our commitment to community involvement and the detrimental nature of the problem, i found myself compelled to become involved.
There is a new policy in place in our school which greatly limits parental access to the classroom of their children. I have sat in on the school board meeting, approached and met with school board officials and have communicated my concerns with local media, as well as encouraging others to do so. In this blog, I will post an editorial scheduled to run in this week's local paper, The Coastal Courier. I offer this advance copy to my friends and readers to ask you to pray for a positive solution to the conflict our school system and community are facing.
Liberty County School Classroom Parental Observation Policy
There is a great deal of controversy that has arisen in the
wake of a policy that was put into place in the Liberty County School System.
This policy affects a parent’s ability to access his or her child’s classroom
for the purpose of observation. Those
behind the policy maintain that its sole purpose is to protect children and
teachers from outside dangers. They
communicate that his policy is about limiting school access in the interests of
safety. However, the people being limited are not unknown people. They are the parents
who registered their children for school, met with teachers and administrators,
and pay taxes into the school system.
The same policy that removes almost all parental observational
access from the classroom has requirements for visits to the school. They
include sign-ins, a requirement of legal guardianship of a student in the
school, and even a provision to require photo identification to be presented
upon entering school property. The only
exception to these requirements occurs on days when there are special events,
when a parent and community residents
-meaning anyone - can enter the building unescorted, walk unnoticed into a
crowd of most or even all of the students.
If this policy is about safety, this issue should be addressed. The
ability for a stranger to walk into the crowd is a far greater and more
realistic threat than the likelihood of a stranger to enter school grounds and especially a classroom on a given day.
In these times, our children must be protected in the
classroom and the school system has a daunting task of maintaining their safety.
This issue has been spun as a safety issue. Yet, while it does little to
address real safety, it does offer a great deal to protect teachers from
unannounced observation by a concerned parent. To call it a safety policy damages
the credibility of the system and the trust between parents and teachers. It
makes it more difficult to deal with both issues.
Today’s teachers are limited in how they can maintain
discipline and order in a classroom. As a result, there are things that can
occur which can greatly hinder a child’s ability to learn. Teachers often
resort to raised voices in the classroom and occasionally, the classroom environment
becomes unruly – even chaotic, which can be confusing and even damaging to a
child. Such an environment can promote misgivings or even fear in a child and
in so doing, can paralyze that child’s ability to perform and produce in the
classroom, resulting in greater failure, not only academically, but in the
child’s ability to relate with the teacher as an authority figure.
A child’s greatest hope in that moment is for his or her
parent to have a real understanding of what is occurring in the classroom – not
what is occurring in a pre-planned 20 minute observation visit, but what is
occurring in the chaotic moments. Should
a parent have unfettered access? No. But a parent should be able to address an
immediate concern, approach an administrator and, with that administrator,
enter a classroom in that moment if there is reason for the parent to believe
that the classroom environment is detrimental to the child. This is no different than the policy that the
Division of Family and Children’s Services (DFCS) imposes on a household if
even one concern of a child reaches their attention. If the classroom environment is as it should
be, you have the reinforcement of witness of the administrator. If the classroom environment is jeopardizing
the learning process, it has a greater chance of being recognized and addressed
properly through the administrator.
Over the course of a year, a child will spend the better
part of 180 days at school. Counting a seven hour day, this means aside from
extra-curricular activity, that a child will spend in excess of 1,200 hundred
hours in the authority of his teachers and school administrative staff. Under
this policy, unless federally mandated, a parent is only allowed to observe his
child in a learning environment for 40 minutes of those 1,200 hundred hours.
72,000 minutes of school – 40 minutes of observation – preplanned, pre-prepared
observation. That is a ratio of 1/1800
minutes.
The school system touts that it wants the parents to be
involved in the education process, but in reality, this policy only allows the
parent to observe the classroom environment – the most important environment - for one minute per thirty hours of
school.
I respectfully ask this board to reconsider this policy.
Parents need greater access than this to the classrooms and teachers of our
children. You need to consider that you
are sending the message that this policy is not simply about security and
protecting students and staff, but about also protecting staff from a child’s
voiced concerns, and about limiting a parent’s access to ascertain true
information regarding that child’s concerns.
