Parents Have The Ultimate

Responsibility

To the Editor:

Mr Gissen’s large prom party demonstrated a terrible example for our high school students. His protestations that “he did not intend for the students to have alcohol” miss the point, because when he found out, he did not call the police himself to put a stop to the illegal underage drinking. His failure of action shows his claim of intention to be hollow.

And Mrs McClure’s silence as chairman of Newtown’s BOE highlight what is wrong with Newtown’s education system. This along with Mr Pitkoff’s poor performance over the last four years and our decline from Presidential Blue Ribbon status have everything to do with poor leadership at the top and noting to do with lack of money. I feel the Board of Ed as a whole is responsible for our sad school situation and needs to be replaced.

Too many parents are mistakenly worried about their children getting A’s instead of what they are learning and their academic proficiency.

With world competition what is, how can our children compete when some are allowed to graduate from high school with only two years of math and one year of science? I don’t think minimum wage laws will protect our children from world competition. Nor will outsourcing of engineering and technical jobs stop until we start producing more and better engineers and scientists.

Consider why have we allowed the academic school day over the last 30 years to be diminished from 80 percent of the day spent on academics, to less than 50 percent of the school day spent on academics. In many respects this is an area where the school board should have said: These new education fads are not for us, but they did not.

Parents are tired of hearing, “You are not an educator!” Really, let me just state my case. I am a parent of five. I went to high school and got 1320 on my SATs back in 1962. I also went to college and have an Airline Transport License and three different flight instructor licenses. I put five through high school, and to date, two through college including master’s degrees. The other three are in college. The point is: Before administrators or BOE members talk down to parents, they need to make sure they know whom they are talking to.

The BOE administration’s philosophy has been — the kids are going to do it anyway…Let’s teach them the best way to do it…I think our kids can be better than that. After all, we were better than that as were our parents (the Greatest Generation). Simply put, current expectations are too low. It is time for the school-sponsored message of “If it feels good, do it!” and “your parents don’t understand you, but we do,” to stop because it has nothing to do with improving academic proficiency. It’s not the schools’ job to teach our kids to drink, give them condoms, or take them for abortions!

School officials should stop disenfranchising parents, and remember parents have the ultimate responsibility and last say regarding their children’s education, we also have the last say on the budget. Do you hear us now?

Daniel Kormanik

85 Great Ring Road, Sandy Hook                                   May 15, 2007