Two Thumbs up for my Represenative--Richard Greenwood

I sent a letter to my Utah House Representative today. And he responded...FAST. I just thought I'd share:

Dear Representative Greenwood,

You may remember me, I had the opportunity along with my husband to discuss many issues with you in our home before you first took office. Of those issues public education took the fore front. I really appreciated the time you spent with us and your thoughtful conversation. I am writing you today to urge you to do all you can to fund public charter schools in a fair and equitable way. You may remember our conversation about the frustrations I was having with my son and daughter in our local public school. Let me tell you what has happened since.

My son starting in 2nd grade was bumped up a grade for his math studies. He excelled and did great with the accelerated studies until 4th grade. At that time we had a new principal and she was unwilling to facilitate the timing between classes to allow this opportunity to continue for my son and several other kids. At the time, it was arranged that my son’s 4th grade teacher would teach him the 5th grade material. My son’s teacher refused to do that as agreed. After working with both the teacher and principal for many months to solve this problem, the principal finally told me. “It is not a good idea to push a kid in math because he will run out of classes to take”. I was astounded by this because had my child had a disability, they would have been required to teach him at his level. As it was, he was excelled in a subject but they had no interest in furthering his education and this was to his detriment. He began to be bored and his citizenship grades greatly declined as the year went on. To me, this meant the principal and teacher were just not willing to put forth the effort to make something useful work. At that point I started looking around for other educational opportunities and found Venture Academy. It is a charter school in it’s second year and teaches expeditionary learning. You have several constituents that go to this school. What this means is that the goal is to intertwine the core classes in in-depth examination of a subject. They also do multi-age grouping for learning and encourage kids to be taught at the level they are ready for and need. This was a great solution for my family.

But, the story does not end there. Because of the distance to the charter school, I decided to put my kindergartner in our local public school. And would you believe what I found. Class sizes across the board (with the exception of kindergarten) had decreased from when my older kids attended. This was most impressive in the 6th grade class where 3 years ago there were 31-34 kids in a class and this year the beginning of the year class list had 28. Just ask any teacher if a decrease of 6 kids in a 6th grade class would make a difference. This decrease I believe is directly related to the opening of 2 charter schools in our district boundaries. In addition, I also found out that the principal has once again instituted the opportunity for students that are more advanced in math to take classes at a higher level than their grade. To me this can ONLY be attributed to the competition that was felt from several families leaving the school due to similar frustrations I had.

Charter schools are not for everyone, they are a piece of the puzzle and along with traditional public schools can help parents and students find the right fit for their education. Please do all you can to ensure these choices are available for all the kids in your district whether they go to traditional public schools or public charter schools.

Thank you for your service,

Kat(I put in my full name and address...but you don't really care now do you.)

The cool thing...he wrote back...FAST (within a half hour) didn't expect that on the second to last day of the session but that gives him 2 thumbs up from me. :)

I do remember visiting you and your husband several years ago in your home. I have enjoyed reading your comments and support what you have said. I have had others write me similar stories. I will do what I can to see that money continues to be spent on our charter schools.
Please let me know if there are any other issues that you feel need to be brought to my attention.
Richard


So...go on if you have an issue write to your representative...who knows what will come of it! To find your legislators in Utah go here: Utah Legislators