from April & Mike Lamoureux, Milton Parents
Dear Superintendent Gormley and School Committee Members:
As a parent of two young children who have yet to enter the Milton Public Schools (MPS), we are gravely concerned with the School Committee’s plans to vote next week to cap the French Immersion Program and institute a lottery that randomly selects students for access to this valuable resource.
As a community, we face a significant problem in that our English Program is failing to attract a critical mass of students. We understand and respect the concerns of parents with students enrolled in the English Program, and we agree that better attention should be paid to improving the competitiveness and caliber of that program. We fully expect that the Milton School Committee will take action to ensure that all students in Milton have access to excellence in public education, and we strongly support efforts to adopt readily available best practices from other schools that have successfully implemented innovative and attractive programming in their English curriculum.
Regretfully, the Superintendent and School Committee have chosen to pursue a proposal that will diminish participation in French Immersion and reduce family choice, while seemingly doing nothing to improve performance and competitiveness of the English Program. We chose the word “seemingly” because there is very little information to suggest otherwise, but in fairness, there is very little information publicly available on this subject period. The online materials are currently limited to a July 2012 PowerPoint presentation which lacks any significant detail, and an MPS FAQ that defers many answers to the school’s own questions until further research is conducted. Neither of these communication vehicles have been particularly effective in helping our family to understand the implications for our children. Since our children are not yet enrolled in the MPS system, we have no reason to attend School Committee meetings and would have no idea that this proposal was even under consideration if it had not been for local media reports and the whispers of neighbors.
The choice between open access to French Immersion and excellence in English education is a false choice for our community, and in our opinion, the situation has been handled very poorly. We do not feel that the Superintendent or School Committee have done an adequate job of exploring all available options to address this problem, or communicating those alternatives to parents. Similarly, we do not feel as though the Superintendent or Milton School Committee have done an adequate job of educating parents on this specific proposal or collecting their feedback. For a change of such significance, the School Committee should have undertaken a thorough public engagement and consensus-building process that reached current MPS parents as well as those families who will soon have children entering the MPS system and will be most affected by this policy shift.
Our family has not yet had the opportunity to explore whether French Immersion is even a good fit for our children, but we believe that the cap/lottery proposal will do very little to address the lack of competitiveness and innovation in the English Program, and we are very disappointed that this series of events has created such a divisiveness among neighbors that should ordinarily be aligned toward a common objective: the best interests of our children. We respectfully request that the Milton School Committee defer any vote on the cap/lottery proposal until further research is completed and made publicly available, an extensive public outreach campaign is completed, including public question& answer sessions giving families the opportunity to ask specific questions of relevance to them, and alternative proposals are presented to the School Committee for consideration and public comment. We are pleased to see that Superintendent Gormley has today added a last minute information session for stakeholders scheduled for 10/16, but we feel that this meeting is not enough to justify a binding vote of the School Committee the following evening.
Thank you,
April & Mike Lamoureux
Milton Parents
Hi John, I saw your post and wanted to let you know that I too will be impacted and also have children in both the English and French programs. I want to give you my impression of the problems the MSC and administration have brought up about the imbalance in classes. I’m responding as a parent not as an expert so others may weigh in with more insight and clarity.
Single strand classes – whether its French or English as a parent, I do not want my child to spend 5 years with the same 18-25 kids. The reason is because if my child has issues with one of those kids, there is nowhere for me to go except to another school. This limits the amount of kids my child has exposure to and I think long term about what happens when these kids go to middle school and don’t know but a handful of children. Middle school is huge place and although I may have the ability to introduce more children to my kids, others may not. I believe from a social standpoint, this makes a difference. This also becomes an issue if a teacher really isn’t a good fit for a child, again, in single strand there is no good choice or flexibility.
Special education needs – if you have a child with special education needs, the need for peer role models is an essential and required part of the educational experience. There are laws that guarantee educational services and class structure. When an overwhelmingly number of parents choose French, you have an issue because kids with additional needs do better with peer role models that they can emulate. One or two peer role models is not enough and not every child has the ability to be a peer role model. The town has an obligation to educate all children not to have a French Immersion Program. I will be the first to tell you that I do not have a lot of experience with this but if I had a child with additional education needs, I’d like to know that the classes have the right balance so my child could have the potential thrive. Many people think that this is not their problem if their child does not have additional educational needs but the reality is, the town has an obligation and they need to do what is best for all kids. If the town cannot, my fear and I’m sure this has been thought about by the MSC and administration, is that someone will sue to place their child out of district.
Administrative challenges – teacher and student assignment: Every year, the administration has had to figure out based on the numbers, where the need is for English and French teachers. We make an assumption that there is an abundance of qualified French teachers and I don’t believe that to be the case. From an English perspective, each year, these teachers are left to wonder if they will have a class. I don’t know about you, but if I had a job, performed well and had the opportunity to have a better chance than not to be employed the next year with another great company, I’d go there instead of waiting to see where I’d either be transferred to or whether or not my position was eliminated. I think this really hurts the English strand. Some have dubbed this the “Sport Illustrated” of Milton teachers. Meaning the English strand had some great teachers that have been recognized via the state or nationally that have either been transferred, terminated or leave because of the imbalance of French and English classes. If the administration had solid numbers each year, then teachers and administrators would be able to manage staffing. Again, having strong teachers in both strands, makes the school system as a whole stronger. As for student reassignment, my daughter was originally placed in Cunningham although our home school is Collicot. This may not seem terrible but as a parent, dealing with two administrations, two everything in fact is a nightmare. I was lucky that it was right next door but in some cases, parents are asked to send kids across town based on French classes and it may seem like its no big deal and a parental choice but it’s not ideal. I was “lucky” as this year someone dropped out of Collicot and she was moved to our home school.
Another perspective to think about is the children in French who transfer after the first, second or third year because it wasn’t a good fit or the child struggles. Could you imagine the town saying sorry, you have to stay in French get a tutor and stick it out? Parents would be outraged and say the town has an obligation to educate their child in English. That’s how children with special education needs feel when people say it’s not there problem, suck it up and seek additional resources somewhere else. It may be only a few who may transfer out, but we still have an obligation as a town to educate them.
I had a friend who sends her children to a private school and she told me that she too would be upset if she were not able to choose and I can understand we all have an obligation to our own kids but the reality is the town has an obligation to all Milton children. The schools are community based and the town recognizes the need to educate all kids. If you want real choice, the simple decision is to seek a private school education. If your need is a French Immersion Program that you are guaranteed to have, private school is the way to go. The lottery system is a way to sustain the French Program. In a public school system, it’s not about one child or the needs of a few, it’s the needs of a whole town, you, me and the next person. Good luck and lets hope some decisions are made come Wednesday.
I am a Milton resident of three years and have a newborn child. My wife and I moved here in large part due to the quality of the elementary schools, and the widely touted French Immersion program.
As the French Immersion program has generated such great performance from the enrolled students, the more fitting discussion we should be having is about increasing the French Immersion enrollment numbers, not chopping it in half. A lottery system only serves to teach our kids what it would feel like to be a victim of a crude game of chance- a lesson that no first grader should ever endure.
If the impetus for the F.I. program cap is parent’s complaining about the disparity in scores to the English students, the answer is to not bring the F.I. children down, but to build our English students up. Resenting success is a troublesome path. Our children should not be subject to social experiments based on statistics twisted for one group’s agenda. Parents need to remain empowered to choose what is best for their particular child. That could be French immersion. That could also be English.
I would also like to take exception with anyone who disregards a future MPS family as having any less clout or say in the result of this week’s vote (Linda’s response seemed to infer this approach). The School Committee needs to remember future MPS families have a greater interest in the outcome of this vote than families who have already benefited from this long standing successful program.
Thanks for your time in listening, and please preserve this great program for any and all who want to enroll.
Mark Botelho
Would there be less of an uproar if the French program were only available for a small percentage of students chosen selectively by the school system like a “gifted” or advanced program and not left as a parental choice or a lottery draw rewarding a majority at expense of a minority? Maybe the two track education program should be brought back to being an all inclusive English program that does not arbitrarily choose what opportunities are available for each students. My concern is that my two children will have very different education experiences because of a lottery draw.
John Fichtman
91 Cheever St