This post is from from my other blog here

We haven’t to date been really critical or focused about a particular issue regarding LCPS, but today we’ve got a beef – that pretty much impacts all Parents in our opinion.

In our ongoing quest to keep up with school development and policies regarding curriculum, we’ve certainly tried to be involved, informed and work with our children’s teachers as much as possible – while acknowledging the constraints and pressures we’re all under. Most of the time, the schools have been quite helpful, reaching out and involving us in curriculum decisions (either at the school or classroom level.) Recently, however, the school system has come up egregiously short in their public objectives to be more inclusive, with respect to parent input.

Last year, our local elementary school did reach out (during a sparsely-attended PTA meeting) to involve parents in reviewing improvements regarding math curriculum, as part of the LCPS “School Improvement Program” (SIP) process. They offered participation in parent-teacher meetings with the Math Teachers….I volunteered to attend, with 1 other parent.

Several meetings since then were apparently scheduled, though with invitations sent less than 24 hours before the mid-afternoon sessions, and in one case, an hour before the actual meeting. “We will be holding a brief meeting today to go over everything we’ve talked about over the past months…”

Obviously, it would be extremely difficult for anyone to actually receive, respond and make arrangements for childcare or business meetings to attend the meeting. In fact, no parents have been attending these meetings. This past week, a similar short-turnaround message was sent….I responded by asking whether the meetings could be scheduled with more than a 24 hour lead-time. The curt reply was entirely unsatisfactory, accompanied by a document that listed all the various math strategies (to be applied to all math classes) that had been under discussion and were to be implemented, ostensibly with parent input.

I can guarantee there’s been no reasonable parent input, furthermore, the document contained quite a bit of material that would definitely have been better presented in a series of parent/teacher meetings. Things we don’t know anything about, like “Sunshine Math”, or “Mountain Math”, or “Math Early Bird”. Here’s the full list:

- Math Early Bird
- Definition Flash Cards
- Clearly Stated Objectives
- Manipulatives
- Benchmark Tests
- Beginning of the Year Assessments
- Pre-tests
- Mountain Math
- SOL Blitz
- Math Remediation
- SME
- Music and Math
- Literature Connection
- Art Connection
- Writing in Math
- Visual Reminders (posters)
- Games (centers)
- Math Word Wall
- Interactive Notebooks
- Cooperative Groups
- KWL (in pairs)
- Portfolio’s
- Enrichment Corner
- Math Challenges
- Sunshine Math

Note this post is NOT about whether these are good things, but about the lack of outreach and reasonable community inclusion.

Is there a large moving train here, that can’t be stopped? Is this the experience others have with their schools? Will the Board of Education address this fairly significant lapse in outreach, if it's widespread?