Every fall in the Morgan Hill School District, it
’s the same old story. Weeks into the school year, dozens of
students are yanked from the classrooms to which they’ve grown
accustomed and moved to new classrooms, or even shuffled off to new
schools. It’s unfair, it’s disruptive, and it’s got to stop.
Every fall in the Morgan Hill School District, it’s the same old story. Weeks into the school year, dozens of students are yanked from the classrooms to which they’ve grown accustomed and moved to new classrooms, or even shuffled off to new schools. It’s unfair, it’s disruptive, and it’s got to stop.
When changes must be made, the transfers must take place within the first two weeks of school.
Every year MHSD administrators shrug their shoulders, say that it’s just too bad, but there’s really nothing they can do about it. They say school attendance is always low before Labor Day, that they can’t make any educated guesses about how many students will be at which school and in which grades.
In essence, they tell the students, parents, teachers and taxpayers of this district to live with it.
What is particularly upsetting this year is that it is happening after four full weeks into the school year. Th district’s explanation: Labor Day, Sept. 6, was later than usual this year.
Every year parents complain. This year, teachers are complaining too. You know a situation has gotten bad when teachers are speaking up before the school board, a politically dicey move at best.
Here’s what Barrett Elementary School kindergarten teacher Kristiana Kammann told trustees about this year’s student shuffle.
“The teacher takes a role just one step below the parent,” Kammann said. “Students are not just ID numbers and teachers are not just a payroll drain.”
At any age, students develop important relationships with their teachers and classmates, learn and come to rely upon the rules and routines of their classroom and school. Pulling them away from that at any time is disruptive. Doing it after four weeks into the school year is irresponsible.
When pressed by parents, trustees and the press about this matter, Assistant Superintendent Arlene Machado eagerly pointed to a “memorandum of understanding” parents are required to sign when they enroll their students in Morgan Hill public schools.
The memorandum of understanding is a poorly written document that contradicts itself. In one place, it states that a student’s prospect for success is the top placement criteria. In another, it says that placement is based on districtwide criteria. Huh? The district can’t have it both ways.
We’re not lawyers, but we doubt this document – one that parents are forced to sign in order to enroll their students for the public education that they have a legal right to receive – has any legal value. In fact, its only value is the comfort it gives to shortsighted administrators eager to cover their behinds.
The district’s inability to plan for student placement, to take into account years-established attendance patterns (it’s low below Labor Day), to put the best interests of students ahead of the convenience of administrators has to stop.
It’s time to put an end to this extraordinarily poor management practice, it’s time to put more value into our students, parents and teachers. It’s time to stop shrugging shoulders, to stop waiving memorandums of understanding at anyone who would dare question administrators, and time to find real solutions to the very real problem of the annual student shuffle.
