Reaction to Septemeber Meeting

cmurray  posted on: 09/21/12 09:17 AM

The obvious lack of a cohesive vision for our role in bringing about excellence and equity for all students in our region has me concerned.

Is it that we are too diverse too have common missions and beliefs? Do we need to function in sub-groups and fiefdoms in order to collaborate at all? Are we too caught up inour own district-level concerns, security cameras, board member changes, budget details, and pet projects to remember that the rising tide affects all ships?

It seems to me that when we felt we had enough outside pressure from the great unknown of the looming and ill-defined standards and their ominous assessments two or three years ago, we decided to band together and enable our front line forces to work together - English teacher to English teacher whether from Canandaigua or Sodus or Romulus or Williamson - in the hopes that they as professionals would rise to the challenge of working together on what was best for all of our kids. Admittedly even then we weren't willing to pay them for the effort, but we were willing to ask them to do it nonetheless. Remember? We brought them all together in Phelps, bored them with Regent Farley's drone and them set them to the wolves of apathy, underfunding, lack of leadership and lack of follow-through. No wonder many have floundered. Would Eisenhower have succeeded at Normandy with such an approach? We are our own worst enemy when we make promises, exchange staff if not gifts, and then forget about those agreements to cooperate when it is inconvenient or costly in terms of dollars or staffing or time away from other tasks.

Nothing we do is more important than leading the instructional charge. For us to allow ourselves to abdicate that responsibility as a region because we somehow feel less threatened by the standards process than we once did is tantamount to educational neglect and we should be ashamed of ourselves for approaching that abyss. Just some reflections that might warrant a comment or two back. The ball's in somebody else's court....