By: Diane Benjamin
I attended most of the School Board meeting last night. Parents need to pay attention to the changes they are making.
In my opinion they are dumbing down education. If your child doesn’t turn in an assignment and gets a ZERO, it won’t affect their grade. There was much discussion about “mastery” of content yet final exams might be eliminated. I see finals as proof of “mastery”, evidently the district doesn’t. Finals will also be limited to no more than 10%-20% of the final grade. If the students did learn the material finals prove it.
The District is also developing a policy for students to re-take tests. They want to eliminate each teacher having their own policy. Do you remember ever re-taking a test? Either students study for the test or they don’t. That used to be called being accountable for your actions. A comment was made about standardized testing scores decreasing because students are failing to comprehend word problems. Easy fix, give more word problem tests, attention spans need expanded by requiring them to be expanded. Maybe shrinking the High School library to a couple of shelves wasn’t a good idea.
The much bigger issue is the lack of transparency. A brief recap of the tax levy was shown before the two of us that bothered to attend asked questions. It had little detail and was disingenuous at best. It showed property taxes on a $200,000 house would decrease by $21.90. What that slide didn’t say is a $200,000 house last year isn’t a $200,000 house this year. If your assessment increased your taxes will increase.
This presentation should have been on the Tri-Valley website. It wasn’t. Whatever information the Board has should be on the website. Tri-Valley is purposely hiding information because they can. (Only TWO taxpayers showed up!)
This video begins with Casey Misch asking questions, he is running for School Board. After Casey I asked questions. The Board is taking the maximum increase possible because they want to. For the referendum 4 years ago they took the maximum possible by just sliding in more bonds to replace the ones they paid off.
All of the information the School Board receives should be posted on the website. Only time will tell if they comply. Transparency is essential for schools, right now Tri-Valley gets a zero.
First of all…
THANK YOU for attending the meeting!!
I wanted to attend – I had another meeting at the same time.
These guys are clowns!
When you all asked about reviewing expenses and possible cuts –
They only responded about adding staff when needed…so I think the real answer to the question is = NO. No, they do not bother to try to cut any expenses.
Someone in the room stating their taxes “are only $3k on their $200k house”
Give me a break! OUR TAXES ARE SKY HIGH ALREADY!!
And when you pointed out that they are not putting ANY documentation online, they did NOT indicate that they would take action and add the information online!
Everyone on the Board was OK with the old “business as usual” approach.
Sounds like we need ALL new Tri Valley Board Members!
Are you specially trained in curriculum and instruction aspects of education? Have you been keeping up with various pilot programs in schools across the country that deploy varied forms of grading? Subject mastery and changing the way that finals work is not something Tri-Valley just came up with out of the blue as a district. Not putting forth an opinion here on whether standards-based grading is a good thing OR a bad thing, just noting that some of this language at the meeting has been commonly used in schools across the country for awhile now, so the hand-wringing over it now is certainly late-to-the-party, at best.
I have taught classes. Since our place in the world for education has dropped A Lot how about going back to what had us #1
Go into teaching or run for school board and make the change then instead of sitting behind a computer and issuing opinions on matters in which your expertise is limited at best and irrelevant at most.
😂😂😂
Your banter reminds me of the saying;
“Those that can, do; those that can’t, teach.”
#collgatecomedyhour. You are obviously one of our defunct teachers who drinks the Jim Jones Kool aid! And we all know what happened to the Kool aid drinkers! We don’t want teachers like you and more importantly we don’t need teachers like you! You are part of the problem in this county. Please don’t tell me you teach science because that will say it all! I hope you are close to retirement!
Does Tri-vally have more information on their “mastery” pilot program. “Educators” should and should be able to explain this change. Students including those not in AP classes and bound for college will face word problems and the analytical skills they require once they graduate. Without completing assignments and testing will they or others have confidence that they have learned the lessons and not learned helplessness instead.
When students are processed through the system without confidence they have objectively learned what they need to succeed, they learn helplessness.
If they do it’s a secret.