Jan 9th: We have a serious leadership problem in the Beacon High School
A Message to all BCSD stakeholders: The following information was presented to the Board of Education Members, on behalf of ABS, at the January 9, BOE meeting.
Lately at ABS we have been taking stock of everything that has gone on in the BCSD for the past year and going over a revised list of priorities for 2017. We are happy to say we have experienced the satisfying feeling you get when you are able to cross some things off your To-Do list. We have many gains to be proud of, and are feeling positive about having a Board of Education who we feel is representative of the community it serves. We are also excited about the progress of the Superintendent search, and the new legal counsel for the district.
We have also been supporting groups and individuals who are making in-roads as partners with the school district: ABS helped to galvanize support for Beacon’s music programs from K-12, and are proud to say the first meeting of the Music Booster Club is happening this week on January 11 here at BHS. ABS is also going to be represented at the Unity in the Community event, also on January 11 at Beahive on Main St, which is a gathering of the many organizations operating around Beacon who will be speaking and answering questions about what they do in our city and how citizens can get more involved. A Student Advocacy group has also been formed, with guidance and inspiration by BHS’s own Rebecca Scofield, and has been meeting with district administration fairly regularly to discuss issues that need attention and improvement, mostly at the High School. We are grateful for all of these opportunities to do outreach, educate others about the good things happening in the BCSD, and work toward partnership with our administration in addressing what still needs to be done to make the improvements we want to see in our school district.
So it is unfortunate that in the last week, the BCSD has found itself in the news once again, and once again it’s not positive news. I’m confident we will do what we do best in Beacon - dust ourselves off and carry on. But it stings nonetheless, to see these issues surface time and again in our district, bringing with it bad press and discouragement - in the students, staff, and in the community.
We are not here tonight to parse through the details of the latest unfortunate circumstances concerning our Athletic department, or the settlement of the complaint made to the Office of Civil Rights. ABS generally feels confident that our BOE has and will properly handle these issues as they see fit, and they will properly represent the voters who elected them to their positions. What IS necessary to do however, is acknowledge that this latest bit of bad press for the BCSD shines a bright light on something that has been an issue for some time - one that has until now not been properly addressed, and that is the fact that we have a serious leadership problem in Beacon High School. There has been a pattern of little to no accountability among High School administration, and this needs to change if we are going to see our district succeed in the way that we all want, and that our students deserve.
We have spoken before about how Beacon’s students have suffered from a culture of low expectations, and recent events have made it clear once again that the High School seems to be being managed by a path of least resistance approach. Whether this is a symptom of skewed priorities, or lack of effort in truly seeking academic excellence, the result is not one that benefits our kids, and doesn’t properly prepare our graduates for college life or the working world.
ABS has compiled a list of issues that have been talked about in the student advocacy meetings as well as mentioned here and there as issues have arisen. We are grateful for the progress being made in increasing the level of communication with the Superintendent’s office regarding these problems, but the greater catalyst for these issues still has yet to be tackled, and that is that without leaders that show a commitment to the students success and a strong vision to bring the achievement level up at the High School, we are not going to reach our goal of helping the students at Beacon High reach their full academic potential.
We want to reiterate that ABS feels positive about the progress we have made and continue to make - change doesn’t happen overnight, we all know that and we don’t expect that. However we feel it is time to begin on that road to real positive change by acknowledging that we have a problem at the high school and it needs to be addressed with real actions from this point forward. There needs to be a raising of standards, and a major increase in accountability for administrators when those standards have not been met.
Without strength and accountability in leadership, when bad things happen there's a tendency to sugar coat, delay or pass the buck. This is no longer an acceptable practice and we feel there is no better time than now to make the point that in order to be the model school district we feel we can be, these concerns need to be addressed in a concrete way. And ABS is here to help do what we can to make improvements. We are already hard at work on this this and will continue our commitment to the BCSD, and in turn would like to see your commitment to making these crucial improvements at the High School as well - thank you.
We have also been supporting groups and individuals who are making in-roads as partners with the school district: ABS helped to galvanize support for Beacon’s music programs from K-12, and are proud to say the first meeting of the Music Booster Club is happening this week on January 11 here at BHS. ABS is also going to be represented at the Unity in the Community event, also on January 11 at Beahive on Main St, which is a gathering of the many organizations operating around Beacon who will be speaking and answering questions about what they do in our city and how citizens can get more involved. A Student Advocacy group has also been formed, with guidance and inspiration by BHS’s own Rebecca Scofield, and has been meeting with district administration fairly regularly to discuss issues that need attention and improvement, mostly at the High School. We are grateful for all of these opportunities to do outreach, educate others about the good things happening in the BCSD, and work toward partnership with our administration in addressing what still needs to be done to make the improvements we want to see in our school district.
So it is unfortunate that in the last week, the BCSD has found itself in the news once again, and once again it’s not positive news. I’m confident we will do what we do best in Beacon - dust ourselves off and carry on. But it stings nonetheless, to see these issues surface time and again in our district, bringing with it bad press and discouragement - in the students, staff, and in the community.
We are not here tonight to parse through the details of the latest unfortunate circumstances concerning our Athletic department, or the settlement of the complaint made to the Office of Civil Rights. ABS generally feels confident that our BOE has and will properly handle these issues as they see fit, and they will properly represent the voters who elected them to their positions. What IS necessary to do however, is acknowledge that this latest bit of bad press for the BCSD shines a bright light on something that has been an issue for some time - one that has until now not been properly addressed, and that is the fact that we have a serious leadership problem in Beacon High School. There has been a pattern of little to no accountability among High School administration, and this needs to change if we are going to see our district succeed in the way that we all want, and that our students deserve.
We have spoken before about how Beacon’s students have suffered from a culture of low expectations, and recent events have made it clear once again that the High School seems to be being managed by a path of least resistance approach. Whether this is a symptom of skewed priorities, or lack of effort in truly seeking academic excellence, the result is not one that benefits our kids, and doesn’t properly prepare our graduates for college life or the working world.
ABS has compiled a list of issues that have been talked about in the student advocacy meetings as well as mentioned here and there as issues have arisen. We are grateful for the progress being made in increasing the level of communication with the Superintendent’s office regarding these problems, but the greater catalyst for these issues still has yet to be tackled, and that is that without leaders that show a commitment to the students success and a strong vision to bring the achievement level up at the High School, we are not going to reach our goal of helping the students at Beacon High reach their full academic potential.
- Lack of Science Honors Courses and AP programs - decisions to drop AP courses seem to do the opposite of what we want, which is to increase quality of education for students.
- Lack of decent electives - we do not offer enough and there seems to be no plan to improve this
- Specifically lack of foreign language choices - we currently only offer one language option
- There is no school newspaper
- *No* Computer Science classes at all, let alone AP.
- Continuing scheduling problems where some students are taking next to no courses and others can’t fit the courses they want into their schedules, meanwhile time is taken up with courses that don’t provide great learning outcomes for students.
- For example, Seminar and Bridge classes that offer no credit and no one seems to take seriously
- In fact there seems to be a serious lack of vision or a plan to increase academic quality on the part of the Principal - this has been shown in the decrease of AP programming in recent years, and no plan to increase elective choices
- We seem to have an accepted policy of doing the minimum - students aren’t required or expected to do anything extra in addition to what is required to graduate. Is this the best way to prepare students for the rigors of college life?
- Rumors of discriminatory behavior in discipline scenarios and unprofessional behavior toward students and parents by the AP
- Lack of student engagement with the BOE - the student BOE member thing has been discussed for quite awhile now yet nothing has materialized
- Need for clear-cut bullying prevention program - the Student Advocacy group has suggested peer mediation and it seems to have been well received, yet nothing has come to fruition as of now.
We want to reiterate that ABS feels positive about the progress we have made and continue to make - change doesn’t happen overnight, we all know that and we don’t expect that. However we feel it is time to begin on that road to real positive change by acknowledging that we have a problem at the high school and it needs to be addressed with real actions from this point forward. There needs to be a raising of standards, and a major increase in accountability for administrators when those standards have not been met.
Without strength and accountability in leadership, when bad things happen there's a tendency to sugar coat, delay or pass the buck. This is no longer an acceptable practice and we feel there is no better time than now to make the point that in order to be the model school district we feel we can be, these concerns need to be addressed in a concrete way. And ABS is here to help do what we can to make improvements. We are already hard at work on this this and will continue our commitment to the BCSD, and in turn would like to see your commitment to making these crucial improvements at the High School as well - thank you.