Alpine District Superintendent call parents "extremists" for wanting times tables taught in Elementary Schools
4/21/07
After Orem City starting the process of breaking away from Alpine School District, ASD officials requested a monthly "let's build better relationships" meeting. At the meeting a couple weeks ago, I have been given a copy of the audio segment where Superintendent Vern Henshaw calls parents extremists for our efforts to get basic math facts back into the schools.
Listen to the audio by clicking this link (for MUCH better quality download this file by right-clicking and saving the file to your hard drive). Here are the key time points if you want to just hear the highlights:
4:30 Vern calls parents extremists and has personally spoken with them (we have never spoken about math so I guess he's talking about someone else :) )
7:50 Math scores have gone up every year because of Investigations (no credit for parents teaching basics at home)
8:17 FINALLY they acknowledge that Investigations didn’t fully match the state core...7 years late...who correlated it in the first place?
9:18 Not certain who's talking here but I think it's Debbie Taylor the new board president. She states a teacher asked her “why did you back down, Investigations was the best thing that ever happened to me as a teacher?” (Why? Because you no longer had to teach difficult concepts like long division and division by fractions?)
9:28 Vern Henshaw in the very soft voice says, "This is not about ________(unintelligible) this is more about parents than kids. The kids do just fine." What exactly does that mean Vern? Kids really don't need the times tables and it's only to satisfy parents that you've brought them back? Click here to hear a digital enhancement of this segment.
You may read my letter to the Orem city mayor and council by clicking here. You should also note in my letter the refusal of Vern Henshaw to cooperate in distributing the "In God We Trust" posters to district teachers because the word "Republic" is present on the poster. Vern believes America is a Democracy and is against the use of the word Republic. It's toward the end of my letter.
Please feel free to spread the news far and wide and I encourage you to call for Vern Henshaw's resignation for having no respect for parents who want basic math facts taught to their children and no respect for our constitution that guarantees a republican form of government. This should encourage the voucher movement and the move to split school districts down to size and reign in the power they wield over families in their districts. You may contact the following people and organizations:
1) Orem City Council and Mayor - How do you Friends of Orem School District like being called Extremists?
http://www.orem.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=297&Itemid=281
2) Alpine School Board and Superintendent - only if you really want to. They will stand by their man to the bitter end which is coming...
http://www.alpine.k12.ut.us/phpApps/html/boardFeedback/boardFeedback.html
3) State School Board (encourage them to pass the measure to split districts over 30,000 students and help bring more local control to schools)
http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/board/1members.htm
4) Legislators--Feel free to email all you know and tell your own representative and senator that you are a constituent. This is exactly why so many parents have moved toward supporting vouchers and legislators should know how you feel about what's happening.
Representatives
http://www.le.utah.gov/house/members2005/membertable1add.asp
Senators
http://se15.utahsenate.org/perl/spage/roster2007.pl
5) Governor
http://www.utah.gov/governor/contact.html
First Lady
http://www.utah.gov/firstlady/request.html
6) Press --Letters to the editor must include your full name, address, and phone number and should be 250 words or less. Anonymous letters are discarded.
Daily Herald dhletters@heraldextra.com
Deseret News letters@desnews.com
Salt Lake Tribune letters@sltrib.com
Investigations Math Menu
** Most important pages to read (all have value but if you will only read
a few pages make it these)
* Very important
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