Letter To Board Employees~~From Joanne Smith

Dear Board Employees,

I like many other parents awoke this morning to the news of my son's school being closed down. I have attended many of the meetings discussing the possibility of this happening and was not at all shocked about the closure of one or more schools. Unfortunately a lot of the children who heard for the first time that their beloved school was closing came from a radio box and not from the teachers that they trust and adore and not from a news letters where their parents could re-assure them that a new school would be a good choice.

My frustrations go beyond the ordinary struggles with lowered real estate and convenience of walking to school with Both public school being closed down, my struggles are with you, the board members. I sat in meeting after meeting with you, along side other tax paying parents who were told repeated that their say meant something.

The ministry REQUIRES such meetings to ensure that the voice of the parents and the children are heard. I sat there with YOU and listened as parents flooded in on surveys, e-mails in constant discussion over their complete disgust over using our children to fill seats in high schools. Not only were these educated people speaking up about the rights their eleven and twelve year olds but these were the parents you were instructed to listen to. It was more than abundantly clear that parents DO NOT want their children exposed to an environment set up to meet the needs of children seven years older than themselves in order to fix your political issues.

Showing up at these meetings was only the beginning step of the job you were suppose to be doing. In repeated attempts to prove to the parents that this was not a decision to send the grades 7&8's into high school you had the ARCs and families meet over and over again to find a solution to fix the lowered enrollment of our elementary schools. But rather than listen, rather than coming to us and explaining to us that you had a plan already in motion you have taken the elementary children to fix a problem that was not even our own.

You are sacrificing MY children in order to save face.I am disgusted by the lack of reaction to the out pouring of concerns that families have thrown your way regarding their children in grades 7&8 going into high school. I am furious that we were ever asked to attend meetings, pay babysitters, drive to the meetings out of town and pour over numbers and ideas so that you could look into the media cameras and smile and say what a wonderful job we were doing and then turn back to the agenda you were already following.I challenge you to gain the trust and respect of the families that do not chose, as I am, to send their children off into private education. I refuse to play your political game. You want to fill high school chairs, then do it with TEENAGERS, not with teeny boppers. I am hoping the ones paying the salary of the ones making the decisions about our children are aware of how ignored we have been, and what a joke they have made of this system, oh wait, I am a tax payer and one of the parents forking over money for fundraisers. I guess I am just one of the fools that believed a word the board employees fed to me at each of the meetings I attended. Let me tell you, it wont happen again!!!

Joanne Smith