Superintendent Malcolm Thomas has taken the position that the Program for Academically Talented Students Center, commonly referred to as the PATS Center, is not a program -even though “program” is in its name.
He says that the PATS Center is a delivery system for gifted students, not a school program.
What’s the difference? The school board has to approve changes to school programs. The board doesn’t vote on “delivery systems.”
The public forum at yesterday’s school board workshop, Thomas had to defend why his “Gifted Advisory Council” didn’t follow on the district’s policies for school advisory councils.
Referring to the newly-formed council, Thomas told the board, “They are an gifted advisory group, they are not a school council. They are a fact-gathering, sounding board.”
He said it was charged with coming up with a district=wide communications plan for its gifted programs and the PATS Center. “This is not a committee that has to be constituted on the school advisory council–not even on the same realm,” said Thomas. “This is representing schools across the district so it’s very, very different.”
School Board member Jeff Bergosh asked if the advisory group’s meetings be open so that parents can attend and weigh in on the discussion.
District Attorney Donna Waters said that the new group is “not legally set up as a school advisory council, quote unquote.” She said, “If you use the phrase ‘advisory council,’ at all, that’s going to cause some confusion. This is a work group.”
According to Waters, if they are going to make recommendations that the school board is going to vote on, they have to meet in the Sunshine. However, fact-finding groups do not because that is a function of staff—-which is why the superintendent used the words “fact finding.”
Wendy Underhill, one of the parents fighting to keep the PATS Center open, sent out her impressions of the first meeting of the advisory working group to other parents of gifted students:
Mr. Kirchharr, Malcolm’s long-time friend, conducted the meeting within strict guidelines. We were told up front that the meeting was being conducted to come up with ideas about how the ECSD can communicate gifted options to students who are transitioning from 5th to 6th grade. And that’s all that was done….
There was no fact-finding done. We were given prompts by the moderator and were expected to raise our hands to answer questions such as:
1) “What are some rules that we can apply tonight to ensure we maintain proper decorum in the meeting?†(answers like “don’t interrupt†and “be open to others’ ideas†were given after called upon); and
2) “In what ways can information about the gifted options for students entering 6th grade be communicated?†(some good ideas were given, but without addressing the core issue, such as Pam Cebula’s continued negative comments and attitude about the PATS Center, how can we be confident that anything will be done in good will and in the best way possible?)
The ideas about communicating the in-school options cannot even be fully developed. All of the in-school options are not yet even developed, according to Ms. Cebula herself. And this is supposed to happen in the next month.
My prediction is that this was an attempt to be able to say that the ECSD was working with us on this to get us to shut up, but then they will come back in one month and announce that because they do not yet have the in-school plans fleshed out, they were not able to complete the action plan. This is a train wreck in motion.
There was no opportunity given to discuss or acknowledge what got us to this point, the core of the problem, although I assumed that might come at the end, during the “Evaluation†segment. We were told up front that the meeting would follow a “POPE†outline – Purpose, Outcome, Process, and Evaluation.
Well, when the evaluation portion of the meeting occurred, there was one short piece of input given by someone, and while I was taking notes, Mr. Kirchharr concluded the meeting by thanking all of us for coming and remarking that we had finished 30 minutes early. Done.
