I know that our community has been anxiously awaiting an update on the Magnet Revision Proposal. I am sorry that an update was not provided sooner, but as you will see below, there has been very little progress on which to update you. The email below was sent to Dr. Thompson, the new Director of the School Choice Office (appointed as of Tuesday, January 29th, 2013), and I have received a read receipt for the communication. I believe the copied email pretty well details the events surrounding the proposal since we last updated you in early December when the proposal was submitted for review. I will provide additional information once it becomes available.
Begin copied correspondence:
Good afternoon Dr. Thompson:
I previously sent this email to Dr. Taylor, but learned just
moments ago that he was no longer with the School Choice office and that you
were the new Director of School Choice. I realize that times of job
transition are tumultuous; however, I must raise an issue for your expeditious
consideration. I am the chair of the School Council at Evansdale
Elementary and the parent of two Evansdale students. The Evansdale School
Council and the Evansdale Principal, Dr. McGuire, have been working with the
School Choice office and DCSD administration since September 2012 to find a way
to sustain the highly successful Evansdale Magnet Program. I have copied
Dr. Boza on this email because he was instrumental in the focus groups to
acquire community input for our proposal. I have included Ms. Brictson on
this email because I contacted her office last week to try to determine where
our proposal was in the review process given that we submitted the final
version on December 4th, 2012.
In order to provide some history, I will recap the
precipitating events here. The Evansdale Magnet Program began in 1994 and
places a particular emphasis on French and Science. Two changes in DCSD
over the past several years have put the program in jeopardy. The
redistricting effort that took place two years ago resulted in the Evansdale
School population growing to 120% of capacity. This redistricting was
followed in the subsequent year by the loss of all of the supplemental funding
that Magnet had been provided and required the redistribution of resources to
be able to retain our French and Science teachers. In addition, because
of the growth in the school population, the students outside of the Magnet
program now have very limited access to French. Compounding the problem
is that because of the overpopulation of our facility and the shortage of
learning cottages, we have unbalanced classrooms that cannot be balanced with
the current restrictions of the Magnet program. The consequence of these
changes has been a division of our community between the magnet and non-magnet
families.
I have attached two copies of our proposed changes.
One is simply a table that lists the requested changes. The second is a
more detailed document that explains some of the challenges our community is
facing that have led to the necessity of change. The core of the proposal
is that we want to make Evansdale a Magnet School instead of a Magnet Program
within a school. This will allow the classrooms to be balanced. The
other points of the proposal are repercussions of this core request and the
necessities created by the dramatic loss of funding over the past few years.
The second point is actually a statement of no change and simply a
reassertion of the Evansdale commitment to STEM education. As an aside,
we are actively engaged in the STEM certification process, further evidence of
our community commitment to STEM education. The third point is a request
to alter the delivery of French which equalizes the amount of French offered to
all Evansdale students. We have a strong commitment to offering a world
language and French has been a tradition at our school for 20 years. We
include the clause, “as funding allows”, because in our focus groups the
families made clear that Science was of higher priority than French. If
DCSD reinstates our funding, if we are successful in pursuing a grant for
foreign language education, or if we can raise sufficient funds within the
community to offer French (after Science is already paid for) then it is our
commitment to do so. We have to make the distinction of “if funding
allows” because of the lack of resources and lack of knowledge about future
budget availability. The fourth point regarding how many students from
at-large will be admitted each year was the direct result of input from Pat
Copeland. Our original language indicated that we would admit a minimum
of 5 at-large students per year in order to maintain a pool of at-large
students and demonstrate our continued commitment to being a Magnet. The
wording now states that enrollment of at-large students will be based on the
discretion of the DCSD Planning Department. During my conversation with
Pat Copeland on Friday evening, she made clear that this change essentially
made our proposal equivalent to House Bill 251. Please note that this was
not our intention nor is the wording in point 4 reflective of what our School
Council wanted. We included the wording verbatim that Pat Copeland told
us to use. I was shocked to learn that this wording is now a major issue
with the proposal. The fifth and final request in the proposal was to
remove the requirement of a B average. This is a matter of necessity based
on Point 1. Because we are also a neighborhood school, we cannot require
a B average of our students in district and therefore it is unfair to require a
B average of out of district students. I do feel the need to point out
that the B average was not originally a requirement of any Magnet Program or
School in DCSD. It was actually Evansdale that requested that the county
added this provision. But, times and circumstances have changed, and now
the B average cannot be included in our requirements. However, I also
want to make clear that we highly value success of all our students and any
student falling below a B average will be offered tutoring and other services –
as is currently the protocol at Evansdale.
The Magnet program has been a very important part of our school
for nearly 20 years. We want to maintain Evansdale as a Magnet but we
have to find a way to adapt the program to be sustainable in light of the
burdens of overpopulation and extinguished funding. Many hours went into
crafting the proposed changes and efforts included extensive meetings and
discussions among Evansdale School Council in August, September, October,
November, and December 2012, community focus groups led by Dr. Boza in October
2012, a community letter and email input campaign in October and November 2012,
input from the DCSD Principals in October 2012, and suggested changes from Pat
Copeland in November and early December 2012.
As I briefly touched on above, I finally had the opportunity
to speak with Ms. Copeland on Friday evening and she indicated that although
she had serious concerns about the proposal that she would bring it to Dr.
Taylor’s attention on Monday, January 28th. I was very
surprised to learn that Ms. Copeland had so many concerns regarding our
proposed changes given that she helped craft the proposal and never raised
these concerns during our interactions with her in November and December
2012. I was also surprised to learn that Dr. Taylor had not seen the
proposal yet as it was submitted to the School Choice office on December 4th,
2012, and in a follow up phone call on December 21st, 2012, I was
told that the proposal would be voted on at the DeKalb Board of Education
meeting in January 2013. I learned last week that the proposal is still
within the School Choice Office. When I called today, January 29th,
2013, to follow up with the School Choice Office, I learned that Dr.
Taylor was no longer in the office and that you were the new Director. I
am emailing you to bring this matter to your immediate attention. I
realize that open enrollment starts in just two short weeks. I realize
that it will be very difficult to make changes at this point, but I ask you to
understand that we began this work in September 2012 and DCSD has known about
these efforts since that time. The final draft of the proposal was made
available to Ms. Copeland on December 4th, 2012, and she saw earlier
drafts as early as the beginning of November 2012. Our community has been
awaiting feedback from DCSD and given all the effort to acquire community
input, our community is expecting a positive change that will contribute to the
academic growth of our students.
If you find that the attached proposal is not feasible, I implore
you to please work with us to find a solution. We have been trying to
engage DCSD administration in helping us to find a solution that will best
support the DCSD goal of “victory in every classroom.” We have the same
goals – the best possible education for the county’s children. Please
work with me to make this a reality for the students of Evansdale
Elementary. I am currently traveling in a different time zone for my job,
but I should be reachable between 11 am and 5 pm EST. Please call me at .... if I can be of any help in explaining the need for the proposed changes or our
goals. We are very willing to adjust the proposal, but we need to find a
sustainable solution for our community that will allow us to preserve our
French and Science Magnet but be attentive to the needs of all of our
students. We need to identify workable changes and enact them before
open enrollment begins on February 11th, 2013.
I thank you for your time and patience in reading this very
long email. I look forward to hearing from you and working with you to
find a solution. I will call your office on Thursday, January 31st
to follow up on this email. Please feel free to contact me at any point.
Best Regards,
Gretchen N. Neigh, Ph.D.
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