Comments on: John Ahmann’s Plan For Tonight’s School Board Meeting

By: LongTimeResident

LongTimeResident — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:54:25 +0000

@TOK – Thank you! This completely and accurately articulated my issue with the bell schedule change. This is also, I believe, the catalyst to Ahmann’s attempt to have a open discussion on the topic.

By: aggie

aggie — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:53:35 +0000

@ TOK:

That’s kinda harsh….to trainwrecks, that is.

By: TOK

TOK — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 02:43:14 +0000

Why wasn’t it addressed? Good question. But not a question to be addressed to the folks here who are unhappy with the approved bell schedule: a bunch of us have been speaking out about the problems this schedule posed (aka “whining”) for a long time. It should be addressed to Dr. Edwards and the people on the BOE who approved the schedule. (Actually, let me modify this a bit: the board did reject the earlier schedule that had classes starting at 7:45 and asked for a redo, with no classes starting before 8:00.)

I’m not generally anti-BOE. I think that Decatur has an excellent school system, and I’ve been impressed with the way the decisions on reconfiguration (with 5th Ave. coming in as the new 4/5 school) and redistricting were handled: lots of information, lots of input taken seriously, and the pros and cons of various options listed explicitly. But the bell schedule has been a real trainwreck. As far as I can tell, it was approached as a relatively trivial executive decision by Dr. Edwards that didn’t require any input (or approval by the BOE), and after the collective freakout in April, they just put something together on an ad hoc basis without a lot of transparency or any sort of systematic weighing of pros and cons.

By: Karass

Karass — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:45:21 +0000

We prefer the title “Anti-everything-the-school-board-does-don’t-drive-on-the-lawn-at-Westchester Side.

(Just kidding, I don’t even know who the other posters are unless they use clues like “Garrett Goebel”).

By: Karass

Karass — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 19:35:58 +0000

Maybe we need to follow the advice of professional facilitators and use more “I” statements and less “you” statements and this will all feel a bit more civil…: (They are mum on “we” statements )