November 2021 - School Board Comments
Parent comments made at School Board meetings during November 2021 (names omitted)
Topics: Communication, Equity Committee
Hello Superintendent Hanson, School Board, and audience.
I am concerned about the relationship between the School Board and the community. My first point is a question that you’ve heard before, but I never heard the answer so I will ask again. Can the district please publish the responses to questions so that everyone can see the answers? When someone in the community asks a question or makes a comment, it’s usually something in which most of us are interested. We’d ALL like the answers. Can you please post the answers on the website or in another public way instead of just answering that one person individually?
Also, the School Board should be interested in getting input and support from the community which they serve. When you regularly remind the audience that you’re having a business meeting and our applause should be kept very brief so we don’t interrupt you, it doesn’t feel very welcoming. Parents and other community members want to feel that their input is valued by the District and that they are partnering with the schools on their children’s education. As part of good communication and transparency in the district, I hope that you consider the message that you’re sending to the community regarding their participation.
Related to this subject of the relationship between the School Board and the community, I have a question about why the District chose, for several months, to keep a person in the Equity Group leadership that was clearly very racially biased. This decision is very disturbing to me and to many others. Such toxicity and bias is not good PR for the district. I’ve heard that the District can’t be concerned about what a person says in their personal life, and I’m wondering why that’s the case when people’s personal posts are often considered for hiring and firing in the business world. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion in our land, and I’m thankful for that. But I think that the District and/or the School Board should be careful about their connections with people who have toxic viewpoints.
Thank you for considering my thoughts and answering my questions. I taught in Tahoma for about twenty years, and I would like to support the District now as a community member. But I need to feel transparency with District leadership, and right now I don’t feel that.
Topics: Communication, Transparency, CRT
Election Summary – Our anti -CRT candidate did not win but he did get 45.6% of the vote, and the Issaquah candidate opposing CRT and SEL did win. Across the country many legislators and One Blue State governor seats were overturned in Virginia over the Parental rights issue in education.
So as a School Board, what are you going to do? Assume winner take all and go ahead with your current agenda and ignore 45% of the Parents? Or are you going to be proactive and see what you are doing that’s got them so energized against you? These are not stupid people and I strongly advise you to figure out how to pay attention to their concerns.
YOU DO NOT WANT 45% OF THE PARENTS AND MANY OF YOUR EMPLOYEES UPSET WITH YOU.
You should put together a small group of 3 people from each side to the curriculum controversy to prioritize what should be done to soften what’s going on. It should be handled more like a jury pool, with a rotating leader from the group each week in a two-hour session. Give the group 3 months to come up with recommendations to the Board and to the public – Perhaps develop a Resolution to be followed by staff.
Topics: Communication
Tahoma School District Board and Superintendent:
The School Board meetings need to change from a communications standpoint. In other words they need to be interactive with the Parents and other stakeholders like property tax payers like myself. A way to think about us, is we are not the enemy if we disagree with the direction of things, we are the CUSTOMER! As a reminder, the Teacher’s Union isn’t a customer, the bureaucrats in Olympia are NOT your customers (our State and Federal Taxes are all paid by us, the CUSTOMER).
Now I recognize your CUSTOMER may at this point have two Heads on many issues and you have an ideological DIVERSITY issue to solve that I spoke of at the last Board Meeting. Over the next couple of months our side will be growing significantly and getting organized and putting together specific facts that are bugging the Parents regarding implementation of DIE, SEL, WOKENESS, The gender dysphoria issues which seems to have been blown out of all proportion, etc. We want to help you satisfy your CUSTOMER with this letter by offering constructive suggestions on improving Board process and communication.
You need to address the very bad AV system and interaction with the CUSTOMER you are using. In the meantime, simple things like summarizing major decision points in large font PowerPoint charts would help. I understand these meetings are ceremonial when it comes to work groups or the Boy Scouts etc., but the true meat of the meeting needs public comment with discussion and public rebuttal before any Board vote. Right now your CUSTOMER, while allowed to speak, is totally shut out of the Board decision process. This is why you need to CLEARLY inform the public on the website or other means of major issues before the Board ahead of time.
I represent the unanimous opinions of all the parents in our group which is growing by the day. We do not want our kids to be singled out for retribution. We will be providing a list of parents in our group and we want you to know there are real people out there that want to see changes made.
____________________
Response from AJ Garcia:
Hi ___________,
Superintendent Hanson asked me to respond to your inquiry regarding district communication and the community’s partnership with the School Board. I appreciate you reaching out with your concerns and for your active involvement in Tahoma.
Regarding the AV system, we brought in a specialist in August to upgrade our system. Due to ongoing supply chain issues, the equipment we ordered has not yet arrived. Our Board is aware of the audio issues and we urge them to speak clearly and directly into the microphones so their voice can be heard through the boardroom speakers. I will remind them ahead of our December meetings as well.
On getting public input, the Board and district consistently use multiple avenues to welcome feedback before the Board moves forward with policy. For example, developing our five-year Board goals, which include the equity work you’ve addressed in your email and public comment, was a lengthy process that included input from hundreds of community members, students and staff through focus groups, committees, surveys, individual conversations and a public cafe Q&A event. I’m curious to know more about the decisions the Board has made in which you’ve felt excluded from the process. I understand that not all community members get their district news from the same place, and my job is to make sure that we’re reaching our community with our communication, so I want to know where we’re coming up short.
You referenced making our Board documents available to the public ahead of meetings. Those documents can be found on the district website and BoardDocs under each agenda item here: BoardDocs® Pro. Please let me know if you have trouble accessing these documents. Meeting agendas are usually published the Friday prior to the meeting, which we share to our website and social media to invite the community to attend or watch virtually.
I agree entirely that our community is divided on many important issues, and I do hope that you’ll continue to share your perspective so that our Board and district leaders are fully informed of our community’s interests when decision-making around the important topics that affect our students.
Please let me know if I can clarify any of these points further.
All the best,
AJ Garcia
