Peoria Pundit

I was just forwarded the following from a reader, who asked: “Not sure if you’d see this yet…apparently Mr. Hinton would like to work with local churches to educate our children?”

Dear Community Partner,

Something remarkable is happening in the Peoria Public Schools. There is an atmosphere of transformation, real momentum and achievement.

In partnership with our community we are growing a world-class district that aligns curriculum with the highest standards, attracts and retains qualified staff, provides differentiated instruction, and utilizes and teaches technology. Peoria Public Schools also offers more choices and options, develops personal education plans for each student, includes assessment and evaluation systems, and creates a universal structure of support to ensure each student’s success.

In an effort to keep moving toward a world-class district, we continue to make changes and look for ways to meet our goals. You may have recently heard about our plan to shorten the school day for most of our primary schools each Wednesday. This decision to shorten the primary school day on Wednesdays is a critical element that will allow our staff to be better trained and help us see remarkable things in the future among our students.

The 90-minute early dismissal does not mean learning will stop for our young students. We are looking at ways that they can continue with their educational day and we know you may be able to help! That is why I would like to open discussion about how we can work together to provide other educational opportunities for the children of our community.

What: Discussion about providing a remarkable community effort to serve our children
When: July 28th, 2008, Lunch served at 12:00pm, Discussion begins at 12:30 (we plan on 45 min. to 1 hour in length)
Where: Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center Activity Room, 800 W Romeo B Garrett Ave, Peoria, IL

Please RSVP to Chris Coplan by July 24, 2008, chris.coplan@psd150.org or 672-6744

Please come with ideas about how your organization’s services and programs might adapt to a Wednesday afternoon schedule and how we can best share your services with our students.

We look forward to seeing you and hearing your ideas!

Sincerely,

Ken Hinton, Superintendent
Dr. Herschel Hannah, Associate Superintendent

So what’s the story? We were told that the loss of face-to-face instructional time would be more than made up by the improvement in education the teachers can provide now that they can get together and gab amongst each other for 90 minutes a week.

So they need to go begging churches for help? Personally, I don’t object to getting churches to volunteer in schools, but aren’t churches already doing things like, I dunno, feeding homeless people. Why put the entire district in a situation where it has to go begging for help? Why not just continue to teach full days, all days of the week?

This entry was posted on July 21, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Local . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.