The Academies explained … well, sort of
March 5, 2010
On March 1st the BoE Meeting was again close to a packed house as The Academy Program was presented to the public. Dr. Maureen Patterson, the Assistant Superintendent for School Improvement, along with the District Administrative Team, presented the plan to those in attendance.
Dr. Patterson began with a over view, stating that the District’s present Graduation Rate is 87%. The Administrative Team feels that is not good enough for Liverpool and that student achievement needs to improve from average to above average. The desire to use MRE and WRE for academies has the concept of creating a college-like campus setting.
You can see the PowerPoint presentation that they presented here .
Again, the overwhelming majority of the questions that residents asked were not able to be answered. Dr. Patterson repeated responded to question with statements such as, “We haven’t look at that yet.” “We are still working on that.” “We still need clarification for that.” etc. The simple fact that she told us that the administrative team spent a little less than two months putting this plan together explains the multitude of unanswered questions.
Many believe that this plan is reminiscent of the laptop program, the stadium construction mistakes, just to name a few of the BoE’s rushes to act instead of taking the necessary time to prepare. We have all been asking for the past month what the rush was to close elementary school s and open the academies. When Dr. Patterson stated that earlier in the day they had shared the Academy Plan with the high school staff earlier in the day, we were all beyond belief considering the fact that there has yet to be a vote on the school closings and the academy plan.
Yet, near the end of her presentation, Dr. Patterson tipped her hat, stating that over the next few days we would be hearing about the Race to The Top program and informed us that this program was what our academies were all about. It was an ah-ha moment for a handful of people in the audience. After doing some research on this topic, the reason for the rush to start these academies in such a volatile economic time was clear.
On Thursday, March 4th, the media made public what the administrative team must have know on Monday when they made their presentation, New York State was named as one of the 16 finalists in the US Department of Education’s Race to The Top contest, here.
For more on Race to The Top (RTTT) here and here .
We will be posting more details shortly.
