Opinion
OPINION: Lehi mom with special needs sons urges “yes” vote on Prop 11
If you have been to or watched a school board meeting in the last 3 years, you have probably seen me sitting in the front row with my wiggly little boy who is in a wheelchair. I started attending these board meetings because I had concerns about things that were happening with my son’s education. I wanted to understand the ins and outs of how decisions were made on a district level and how to initiate change.
In this time period, I have also served on the School Community Council at my son’s elementary school. It has been my privilege to serve with and get to know the teachers, administrators and parents that work so hard to make our school great. This last school year I also had the privilege to serve on the District Community Council. At my son’s school I have also been a room mom and volunteered on projects with the PTA. All of these things, as well as being a mom of a student with special needs, have given me a unique perspective on how things work both at the district level and at the school level.
I have come to know that our educators in our schools deeply love, care for and value our children. I have also gotten to know and see how talented and capable our school board members and top district administrators are. With all of the talent in our district, I have often wondered about why we struggle with some of the issues that we do. The conclusion that I have come to is that with a district as huge as Alpine is right now, it is too easy for the needs of small groups or individual students to fall by the wayside. The gap between the top-level administration and schools is too great and with that gap comes a breakdown in communication and oversight.
One of the main reasons that I started to attend board meetings was to figure out why my son was being moved to a different school every year. By the time my son finished first grade he had attended five different schools. The top district leadership and school board had no idea that elementary-aged special needs students in special classes were being moved to a different school ten times more than their regular ed siblings, and averaged a move about once every 1.4 years. The reason that this all came to light is because middle management decided that they would move these kids yet again and dissolve the Special Education program from their school. Our program got to stay in our school thanks to the parents of the school coming together and making their voices heard. My son has thrived by being able to stay at his school with the same wonderful teacher and he is now in fifth grade.
Splitting our huge district down into three large districts will increase focus and support to our students, their teachers and other school staff. We would go from having 7 board members to 21, covering this entire area. Our new board members would all live in our smaller geographic area. Right now, there are 91 schools in the current district. That is way too many for just 7 people to oversee. With a three-way split there would be 7 board members representing each of these areas with 23 schools in the West (with a couple more to be added soon), 39 in the Central area and 29 in the South. Our new districts would need fewer levels of management, which would facilitate better communication, more oversight, and more support from the top layers of administration down to our schools and programs.
Another issue that I see with our large district is the equitable distribution of programs. Right now, the district leadership and the school board are looking at shutting down or moving severalspecial programs like ALL (advanced learning) and others to different areas of the district. We should not have to shut a program in one area to open another somewhere else. With the 3 new districts, each could assess what programs are needed or wanted and organize those without taking anything away from another area. It would also make busing and organizational needs easier to manage so that our children’s educational needs and safety would never take second place to logistics.
I believe another reason we need a district that is a little smaller is to give our residents a better chance to rally around all students and their educators and help form an amazing community of support, so everyone succeeds. This is vitally important for all of our students. Each area is large enough and has a broad enough tax base to support its building, repair and upkeep needs as well accomplishing amazing things for the teachers and all of the employees.
Districts will also be small enough to engage and involve the community in figuring out what the educational needs and wants of these areas are. This will help pave the way to pass needed bonds and focus the new district’s budget on their area’s specific needs. When history looks back on this election, I hope that it can reflect that no matter what the results, we came together afterwards and continued to work hard for our children and schools. I will be continuing my efforts to work with district officials and administrators, as well as volunteering in my son’s school to support the educators and provide the very bestoutcomes for all students.
I am voting YES on Proposition 11.
Molly Barrington
Lehi, Utah
