This summer, the board received a long letter from an HSD teacher who recently resigned. It detailed a number of concerns with the current direction and management of the school district. Three of the most important issues mentioned in the letter were:
- Lack of respect for teachers’ time. He pointed out that much of “prep time”, and even the teachers’ lunch breaks, are often taken up helping individual students. Sure, technically a teacher is not obliged to give up these chunks of time— but many professional, caring teachers feel too guilty turning away a student with an excuse like “Sorry, this time period isn’t allocated for me to help you”. This might have been tolerable except that he was also frustrated by constant mandatory time-wasting meetings from the administration: rather than learning the latest educational fads or acronyms, he would rather be given the time and space to do his primary job.
- Discipline problems. He mentions that he has seen cases where students physically threaten other students or teachers, and are given a slap on the wrist when referred for discipline. And even worse, teachers may be professionally reprimanded or subtly punished for referring discipline cases, with the implication being that they should have handled them informally. Some feel like the administration inherently sides with students rather than teachers in any semi-ambiguous discipline situation. This may be a result of administration concerns for keeping the suspension/expulsion statistics down.
- Low “credit recovery” standards. He believes the “Plato” credit recovery system is extremely lax, designed to allow students to graduate without even coming close to meeting real academic standards. Rumors are that some students can replace a semester-long class with a week of easy credit-recovery work, and use this to graduate. This is especially concerning due to the fact that one of Hillsboro’s key boasts in recent years has been our top-ranking graduation rate compared to academically similar schools. Is this rate unfairly boosted by lax standards?
Now of course, this was just one teacher’s opinion— there may be many who disagree with the observations above, and it may be colored by specific incidents that were particular to his case. However, what I’m most worried about is his statement that many teachers agree with him, but are afraid of the professional consequences for speaking up through the official channels. Thus, I’m posting here so that any staff members or students who agree (or disagree) with these points, and feel that they cannot safely report their view through proper channels, can contact me directly. I promise to keep your names and other details quiet.
Naturally, I plan on following up on these issues with Superintendent Scott and the rest of the board this fall. Again, please contact me if you have specific facts related to the issues above— if people don’t speak out on what concerns them, it will be hard to change anything.
