What is Milford Doing Wrong?

Last evening at City Hall, the culmination of 10 months of analysis by the Long Range Planning Committee was formally presented to the Board of Education.  The presentation was very impressive and spelled out options on how to address a continued decline in student enrollment in Milford. It was obvious that the committee invested a great deal of time and effort in their analysis.

But the question stands, how does this exercise address the more fundamental issue of student performance?  If anything, any decline in enrollment would only reduce the teacher to student ratio. So with this being said, why does this administration, and some teachers for that matter, believe that having a Specialty School in Milford will retain student enrollment?

There are other schools in CT, e.g. Southington, who are classified the same as Milford by the state, and who are actually meeting state standards and excelling in their CMT scores? Why hasn’t the school board investigated what they are doing to right?  Wouldn’t the responsible and ethical thing to do be to first examine how to resolve this performance issue before shutting down schools, redistricting our children, displacing teachers, and spending millions of unnecessary taxpayer dollars? 

Some board members seem to reference their vision statement quite often during their discussions, but there is one component of their statement which they fail to acknowledge; that they be; ”Surrounded by an engaged community that is proud of its educational system”. I truly wish we were proud.  But truth being told, if they actually “listened” to their community, they would clearly see that the public perception is that they do not know what they are doing. If they did, they would at the very least acknowledge that perhaps this issue is partly due to their existing program and not the facilities in which student are being taught. To even add to this point, could it be that if the district focused more on teaching than testing, perhaps less residents would be sending their children to schools outside of the district. 

As a parent, it’s been my unfortunate observation, through exchanges with our school administrators, that they don’t like being asked questions.  Why?  Of all the institutions in our nation, their philosophy revolves around question and answer, but for some reason are adverse to answering them directly when asked. I find this to be a tragic reality because there is no reason why I should feel compelled to ask close-ended questions to simply attain a direct response.

Our community entrusts our children’s educational welfare in the hands of our school administrators and teachers so they can prepare them for the next stage of their academic career.  We elect representatives from each of our voting districts to be the voice of their constituents.  

So I ask all of you, do you really believe our elected representative and district leadership are looking out for the best interest of our children and community or are they simply going thru the motions to follow their own pre-defined vision.