Parents invited to present schedule ideas to WHS staff
November 16, 2016
A group of 40 parents met with Wenatchee High School Principal Eric Anderson to try to persuade him to include parents in the schedule process and to not treat the 4 x 4 schedule option as a foregone conclusion last night in the basement of the Confluence Health Clinic.
Parents are concerned that students wouldn’t be successful in the schedule proposed by the bell schedule committee last year. The parents pitched the following concepts as crucial to a sound schedule: year-long learning, an advisory period, and limiting students to taking seven classes at a time.
“Not everybody has a two-parent home, not everyone has a home. The schedule isn’t taking away stress, it’s doubling the stress,” parent Jen Howard said. “There’s brilliant kids who can handle it, but my question is what happens to the other kids?”
Parents are also concerned that students will have larger gaps of time between the classes they take if they take a semester-long class in the fall of one year and then continue the subject in the fall of the next year.
“If [my son] takes German one semester and misses the next semester, that’s a break in the continuation of learning and that’s a concern for me,” parent Tony Kim said.
Anderson said that foreign language students would have opportunities to take the language year-round on an alternating A/B schedule where a student would take the class every other day, eliminating the gap.
“We think that this is an opportunity to make our high school better in the long term,” parent Judith Lurie said. “We concluded that we are not in a position to recommend a schedule that the parents can support and stand behind.”
The group feels as though the process needs to start over with a different committee in order to find the right schedule decision. Parents reached a consensus on a “student success” committee proposal that would include five parents, five students, eight teachers, two administrators and one counselor. The committee’s first order of business would be the new schedule.
Wenatchee School District Deputy Superintendent Jon DeJong doubted the viability of starting over the process. We think that this is an opportunity to make our high school better in the long term. — Judith Lurie, parent
“There have been some damage done around the process. There have been some people who have been offended,” DeJong said. “The idea of going back to ground zero is challenging. I’m not trying to diminish how people feel on both sides of the issue.”
Parent Inku Hwang agreed that emotional tensions could be obstructing the process.
“I think the main problem is that there’s a lot of ego here,” Hwang said. “We need to all agree that this is not about people’s egos, it’s about our kids’ education.”
Parents also feel as though they aren’t welcome in the process.
“I don’t think there’s a big sense that you want our input,” parent Michelle Jobe said. “Everything has been initiated by us.”
DeJong said that the school had planned to eventually involve parents in the process last school year to get their feedback on the issues, but ran out of time in the spring.
“By the time the school year started, parents felt like there was no communication,” DeJong said. “What we’re trying to do is to continue the conversation with parents and staff to try and come to the compromise.”
Anderson agreed that parents could present their proposal to slow down the schedule selection process to WHS staff with a tentative date of Nov. 30 and did not commit to any decision regarding the schedule process.
“We have a number of people here who have the ability to give great input and so we take all of that input into consideration,” Anderson said. “We love hearing from parents’ voices as well.”
Anderson also said that he plans to involve students in the process, though didn’t have a definite plan to include them.