When the School Administration announced that our High Schools would return to in person learning with 2 cohorts (not more), no information was provided about how many families chose in person vs. remote learning. This information still hasn’t been provided. Does this lack of transparency bother anyone?
One possibility, pointed out at the time by Jerry Reilly, is that more families chose remote learning than before because of the steady increase in Covid cases and our positive testing rate. Others like me speculated that the School Leadership came to realize that anything other than two cohorts would cause an uproar, and that ways were found to flex on the assumptions, but that admitting this would cause a major loss of face.
So here we are in January with our High Schools preparing for a return to 2 cohort “hyflex” learning, and we’ve no idea how many kids are in each cohort. To me this is unacceptable. The citizens of Newton aren’t being told the truth, and our School Leadership is getting away with it. The absence of aggressive reporting contributes to this. There’s no accountability. Newton may be the home of many leading liberal thinkers, but our government and School Administration behaves more like the Chinese or Russian governments. There seems to be a feeling that they gave us what we asked for, but there’s no need to share the details behind the decision. Huh?
Is anyone else bothered by this? What can we do to get the information released, and to bring about more transparency vs. the translucent or even opaque behavior that we see today?
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Michael in the original announcement they did indeed leave a lot of information that one would expect to be told out of the announcement.
Below is a link to an update that was presented at Monday’s School Committee Meeting that provides information on the what percentages of students selected each model. The original 85% interested in Hybrid became @60%. Some of the reason may be due to the original 4 cohort presentation which would have meant only 2 in-person days per month for each cohort. Up until the 2 cohort announcement, the 4 cohort model was seeming like the likely plan. I know there was a lot of rumbling among students that 2 days a month weren’t worth it so some may have decided to just stay remote because of that. Maybe that is one piece of the puzzle as to why the numbers ended up lower.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TQ1VrDKSHaZXDXX-9WzsMrYqYpPYu6Ab
The link I gave may just go to the School Committee folder. The document with the info I refer to is the “Planning Update for Elementary and High School”.
Thanks Newton Highlands Mom for posting this. I think your comments are spot on. It’s still surprising to me that this information wasn’t shared upfront. This also highlights my point about how difficult it is to get Newton “news”. It’s great that you were able to watch the most recent School Committee meeting, but that shouldn’t be the only way for Newtonites to learn about things. Along with news reporting of some sort there’s a responsibility our government and committees have to share information that affects all of us and is of wide interest.
As a parent of a high schooler, I have more questions than answers.
The administration hasn’t released details such as:
* how many kids in the cafeteria at once. Who sanitizes the cafeteria table and with what. Assigned seating? How many adults in the room?
* which teachers will be remote! I have no idea if any of my kids teachers will be in the school
* if my kid’s teacher is remote, how many students are in the field house? Are they working on the bleachers?
* how many kids are going to be in the school
* how do stairwells work?
* tours for new students? The whole 9th grade class has no idea where their classrooms are.
*will the kids have lockers? How do you space that out?
* when will we get answers?
AND the 9th grade Chrome books are on back order and now won’t be here until March. Now what?
Michael, as usual, you’ve raised an important topic. Thank you.
I think it’s been demonstrated over and over that government agencies are more likely to maintain trust with the public if they are open as to the facts behind their decisions and the reasons for those decisions. Indeed, it can be the case that a specific decision made is often less important–in terms of enhancing public confidence–than the process used to make it. Reading the thoughtful comments by parents NewtonMom and Newton Highlands Mom, it’s apparent that “translucency” doesn’t get the job done on that front.