Board Meeting Observations
The June 13th school board meeting’s main discussion point was about proposed changes to the middle school magnet program. Several years ago Cabarrus County began IB and STEM magnet programs at several elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools. The problem is that one middle school houses only IB and STEM. There are no non IB or STEM students at the school, therefore it has the feel of a private school. The elementary and high school programs are not in isolated schools they are programs with all students. The proposal is to covert the one middle school back to a neighborhood school and move the IB and STEM program to other middle schools in the county. Parents don’t want their students going to the proposed middle schools for a variety of reasons. This board meeting was longer than normal board meetings and a bit more passionate, teachers from two of the three proposed school spoke as well as parents of students that attend the current middle school spoke. There were over forty people signed up to speak at that board meeting. Each person had only three minutes to speak. The speakers were very passionate …show more content…
There was no discussion or input from the school principals. Truthfully I don’t know if the school principals could have done anything to defuse this particular topic however if approved the three school principals involved will have to work extremely hard to get the parents of the transferring students to buy into the new schools. Unfortunately I believe the parents will be looking for problems so they have grounds to push for the magnet school to go back as it was. The IB and STEM programs have been very successful in Cabarrus County but with that success I feel we must still continue to expose our students to cultural differences, if not are we really preparing them for
The June 13th school board meeting’s main discussion point was about proposed changes to the middle school magnet program. Several years ago Cabarrus County began IB and STEM magnet programs at several elementary schools, one middle school and two high schools. The problem is that one middle school houses only IB and STEM. There are no non IB or STEM students at the school, therefore it has the feel of a private school. The elementary and high school programs are not in isolated schools they are programs with all students. The proposal is to covert the one middle school back to a neighborhood school and move the IB and STEM program to other middle schools in the county. Parents don’t want their students going to the proposed middle schools for a variety of reasons. This board meeting was longer than normal board meetings and a bit more passionate, teachers from two of the three proposed school spoke as well as parents of students that attend the current middle school spoke. There were over forty people signed up to speak at that board meeting. Each person had only three minutes to speak. The speakers were very passionate …show more content…
There was no discussion or input from the school principals. Truthfully I don’t know if the school principals could have done anything to defuse this particular topic however if approved the three school principals involved will have to work extremely hard to get the parents of the transferring students to buy into the new schools. Unfortunately I believe the parents will be looking for problems so they have grounds to push for the magnet school to go back as it was. The IB and STEM programs have been very successful in Cabarrus County but with that success I feel we must still continue to expose our students to cultural differences, if not are we really preparing them for