Update and Grand Rapids School Board meeting

So much has happened since my last post! Last Friday at Parent/Principal coffee we had our area representative from MAPSA (Michigan Association of Public School Academies) Alisha Adrianse present on Schools of Choice. She said that we would attend the Grand Rapids Public School board meeting Monday May 21st at 6:30 pm, and a few of us would testify and ask Bernard Taylor to review how he intends to resist school of choice petitions. After he found out about this, Dr. Taylor had phoned her Friday morning to ask us NOT to come and speak, but rather just meet with us privately. Hmmm... Why do you think that was? More on the Monday night Board meeting later in this post.

After the parent meeting Friday morning, Mr. JC Huizenga(our NHA founder) appeared at school and gave our Principal, Dr. K, glimmers of hope pertaining to a charter high school. :-) I will try to get more info on this and post more as it becomes available.

Okay, now to the GRPS Board meeting: After what could only be called a dog and pony show for our benefit: Two scholarship winners(full ride to Ph.d. with only a 3.0 grade point average, blah, blah, blah, Valedictorians, Salutatorians and Quiz Bowl), we were allowed to speak, timed with a timer. Right after I began, I was very rudely interrupted by Dr. Taylor just getting up and walking away to attend to other business right when I was addressing him directly. While he took great pains to correct what he called inaccurate information in my testimony, he never addressed the issues I spoke about, or my partner in this project, Mrs. H, who did a terrific job in stating facts and bringing another perspective to the issue we were trying to get at, the Schools of Choice issue. We asked that he consider the safety & education of our children and that he neither block nor resist releasing students who wish to go elsewhere for school. When he finally chose to address some of what was said, he made the issue about entitlement and said that it really comes down to transportation, those who can, will, and those who can't don't have a choice. He said the issue would pit kid against kid which is false, but he made his comments when we no longer had the microphone, so we could not respond. Then, there were several other jabs at charters such as: Mr. Rinck came out of left field with his report about cars & transportation vehicles running in parking lots, and how much GRPS is doing to reduce pollution by turning off their bus & other vehicles while waiting to pick the kids up at the end of the day. "If it's good enough for Fed-Ex then it's good enough for us.", he continued. This is good stuff. Then, Ms. Hinkle started in with her tirade about schools for profit and how these guys are making a profit off our child's tax dollars. And then how NHA said it was too expensive for NHA to start and run a high school. Guess NHA deserved that one. It wouldn't have sounded quite so bad if she hadn't said it with such a nasty attitude.

You would have been proud of us. We just sat and listened like good citizens, muffled our groans at the misinformation and let them have their say. It was plain to see, their comments were orchestrated ahead of time and just repeating old anti-charter propaganda. Any comments from the audience seating at this point would have been shut down, anyhow. Dr. Taylor likes to grandstand and he took more than his 3 minutes to pontificate on what he thought the issues were that should be talked about. We'll be back to respond later and can't wait for the meeting with Dr. Taylor. He did agree to meet with us.

The part of the evening we weren't expecting came right after Mrs. H spoke and finished in record time! Ms. K, a GRPS parent, spoke about the trouble her son and daughters were having with violence against them, in their schools. She spoke about an incident that happened just today with fighting, and the spraying of Mace at one child, by another child who was brought to school by her mother for this purpose. She said she had attended school in Detroit, and that it was worse here!(ouch) She continued by stating that she didn't want to move to the suburbs to have a safe place for her kids to go to school. Like a lot of us who like living in the city, and don't like what goes on in the schools, she wants to continue to live where she lives right now. Her son attends Creston, but they live in Ottawa Hills District, and her daughters attend Madison Middle(old Iroquois Middle) This lady made our case! It was exactly what we were talking about. We were disappointed that Dr. Taylor didn't address our issues, but we thought he probably wouldn't. But we were angered and obviously frustrated that this GRPS parent (one of their own!) got absolutely no response from the board other than "your time is up, do you have anything else?" Typical. Guess they didn't think her comments would be worth a prepared response. Shameful. Dr. Taylor spent about 4 minutes discussing and joking about the trophy he had earned dancing the night before, and gave Ms. K. no response, and us only a minute's worth. Tax dollars at work! Their budget discussion was entertaining, too. They plan to cut back on textbooks next year, but not teacher salaries or benefits. When Boardmember Mr. Allen pointed out that when budget cuts are made, they must look at salaries and benefits, too, their response was that it was up to Lansing to decide what happens with salaries, that it wasn't up to Grand Rapids. Interesting. I could go on, but you get the point. Thank you and more later.