Toledo city schools are shameful

9/7/2010

Would America have welcomed a Japanese worship center on the site of Pearl Harbor 10 years after 1941?

Peggy Kuhnle

Maumee

Toledo Federation of Teachers President Francine Lawrence, the Toledo Board of Education, and the administration of every one of Toledo's public schools are a disgrace to students, parents, and the city.

This goes back to the asinine decisions to close DeVilbiss and Macomber/Whitney, which may have been the only TPS high schools worth keeping open. They taught students what they needed to attain vocational careers or go on to college.

TPS graduates can't raise families with minimum- wage jobs as burger-flippers. But that is about the only job a recent TPS high school graduate is prepared to perform, with a lot of remedial training.

Anyone who disagrees that TPS high school students need a mandatory curriculum of four years of English, math (including calculus and statistics), and science, two years of computer science and ethics, and not less than three years of social studies, is clueless, like the myopic voters who rubber-stamp every bozo candidate the Democrats nominate.

James A. Adams

Carleton, Mich.

Congressional action in the last year on health-care and financial and economic reform has awakened and enraged Americans.

It may cause a backlash reaction to congressional action as usual.

Voter disgust has been fueled by statements such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's on the 1,000-page-plus health-care bill: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Midterm elections may affect Congress, but that does not mean responsibility and accountability by our elected officials will change.

I propose that before a congressman votes on a bill, he or she must sign a statement that reads: “I have read and understand the bill I am voting on.”

I suspect we would not see another 1,000-page bill.

Ed Obloy

Middlesex Drive

With much larger and more-affluent districts in the surrounding Northern Lakes League area, Springfield Local Schools accomplished what many considered to be unattainable: an Ohio Department of Education “excellent with distinction” rating — the highest, most coveted-grade given by the state each year.

As a teacher and coach at Springfield Middle School for the past 14 years and a member of the Holland community, I feel a sense of pride in my school district.

Even more so, I am proud that I have made Holland my home.

More than 10 years ago, I made the decision to move into the district and support the community in which I work.

Never once have I regretted this decision.

I am confident that when my husband, a Springfield graduate, and I begin our family, our children will receive a distinctively excellent education within Springfield Local Schools.

I will continue to be a proud staff member, a proud voter, and a proud member of this amazing little community.

Shannon Streicher Brazzil

Holland

For Toledo Public Schools to efficiently and effectively educate children, it needs to update its technology. It needs people with expertise in human resource management and the financial acumen to prevent accounting errors. Proper auditing procedures need to be in place.

Management and/or leadership skills at the schools are extremely poor. Failure at this level will continue to ensure student failure.

Without a new paradigm, funding from levies and government will continue to be thrown at fixing endless problems.

Kenneth Williams

Sylvania

You again chose to emphasize the negative in your Aug. 28 article “State places 9 TPS schools in ‘academic emergency'.”

What about the eight schools that received excellent ratings and the other 30 that received continuous-improvement ratings? You really know how to encourage the hard-working teachers, students, and parents at these schools.

If you want a vibrant Toledo again, you need a thriving public school system. Give Toledo Public Schools the same breaks you give the charter and private schools, or at least print the positive things that occur every day in these schools from time to time.

Katherine genzman

Lambertville

You compare apples with oranges when you present information about schools. TPS is made up of a variety of socioeconomic groups, while suburban students are pretty much represented by one group.

TPS is made to look as though there are no schools that are successful. This kind of reporting will stop businesses from moving to Toledo and send people to the suburbs, thereby reducing the tax base.

I would love to see a comparison of Toledo with other large Ohio school districts. I would like to see a chart with statistics from all Toledo schools, so the public can see which schools within the district are successful, and to see that there are choices. Parents and teachers should be demand this.

Kathy Lemon

Holland

Your article about the latest school ratings was difficult to comprehend.

Lake schools received excellent with distinction and Perrysburg schools dropped to only excellent.

Out of 26 rating standards, Perrysburg exceeded Lake in 24.

Your article said Perrysburg lost its distinction rating because we didn't improve enough.

Perrysburg's performance index score, at the top of the list, was 104.5. How much better can you be?

It seems to me that the Columbus “education experts” you referred to can use some remedial math and an elective class in common sense.

I'm not happy that my tax money keeps going to people who come up with these answers.

I'll take Perrysburg's performance any day.

Denny Barrett

Perrysburg

Think how happy we would all be to read that eight Toledo Public Schools, including Grove Patterson Academy, achieved “excellent” status in the most recent ratings.

In no time, it might occur to some enterprising journalist that maybe we should find out how that was done, especially at the school that jumped up two rating levels.

Pats on the back all around, with encouragement from school visits by our new superintendent.

He might even provide a quote or two indicating another news story on school success is not far away, based on what was learned from these achievements.

It's better to exploit the positives when you have them and build from there, if you can get the media to pay attention to the good news.

Tom Duross

Rose Glenn Drive