Press article from meeting with Dr. Taylor

We will continue to work on this issue. Thanks for your support!

Tensions high at meeting about student transfers
Posted by Dave Murray | The Grand Rapids Press September 11, 2007 23:15PM
Categories: Breaking News
GRAND RAPIDS -- Superintendent Bernard Taylor says he's been turned into "a scapegoat" by charter school parents who want Kent County school chiefs to make it easier for city students to attend suburban schools.

But some parents who met with Taylor in a sometimes loud closed-door meeting Tuesday said they "shouldn't have to beg" to be allowed to send their children to schools they say are safer and better academically.

Parents asked for the meeting to vent concerns about county superintendents making it more difficult for students in charter and parochial schools to transfer to suburban districts. Families now have to compete with others in the choice program or hope their home district agrees to release the students.

Several parents and a representative from the Michigan Association of Public School Academies met with Taylor and his cabinet in a Kent Intermediate School District room for about 90 minutes.

"I'm being used as a scapegoat," Taylor said after the meeting. "This has nothing to do with Grand Rapids Public Schools, but with all 20 of the superintendents in the county who made this policy. There were some people who came here with an agenda that went far beyond what we were supposed to be talking about."

Taylor said his staff received 954 transfer requests and approved 623. He said parents of the other 331 students failed to make the case that the city schools could not meet their needs.

But some of the parents said they were frustrated by the meeting and felt bullied both by the number of staff members Taylor brought with him and the discourse, which grew louder in the meeting's final half hour.

"One of the parents was trying to read what her agenda was for the meeting, and Dr. Taylor kept interrupting her and barking back at her," parent Pam Sult said.

"The people who were allowed to leave (the district) were the ones who went in there fighting and begging, and we shouldn't have to do that. They said you need extenuating circumstances. Well, we consider the safety of our children to be an extenuating circumstance."

Alisha Adrianese, MAPSA's West Michigan regional director, said parents were "disappointed" by how they were treated at the meeting. She said the group's next move is to approach the KISD, which oversees the program for the county superintendents association.

"This is a school choice issue and Kent County is one of the worst school choice counties in the state," she said. "Parents shouldn't have to beg, and something has to take hold to fix this problem."

John Helmholdt, the district's executive director for communications, said the gathering of administrators -- which included the heads of security, testing, human resources and academics -- was not intended to intimidate, but to provide resources to answer concerns.