The new report card for the Penns Grove-Carneys Point School District have been published and available to view. Still, the Superintendent of Penns Grove-Carneys Point School District is nowhere close to devising a plan to bridge the educational gap in the community. In Today’s Sunbeam, a front page headlines "P.G.-C.P. school chief reports bullying stats." When it comes to the progress of the students, you never see headlines reporting improvements in the test scores of the students. It seems as the "school chief" have his priorities out of order and no action plan, just a bunch of highfalutin words to divert answering why there is no action plan. The superintendent does not acknowledge that there is a problem, yet he wonder why Brighter Horizon Charter School is steady on the move.
I am not saying the issue of bullying should not be address. However, when is the issue of 311 out of 400 African Americans in the middle school, whom are two (2) years behind in the knowledge of math and science, will be addressed? When are the issues of the Penns Grove High School drop-out rate of 25% will get attention? The State of New Jersey drop-out rate is 4 percent (4%). I guess when 2013 arrive; the superintendent will focus on renewing a $155,000 dollar contract. In my opinion, the community needs a competent and student driven school chief, which will work with the board president, school board, administration, parents and students. We must seek new leadership to bring together which is lost.
What people do not know is that if the problems of the school district remain to exist; one of the options of the State of New Jersey Department of Education is to shut the Penns Grove Carneys Point School District down. All behind what one man; Dr. Joseph Massare fails to do, which is work together with the community in unison to better promote scholars from the school district. Looking at the 2011-2012 report card, there were little improvements. That is not to say do not recognize the minor improvements, but you do not stick a knife in a person back nine inches and pull the knife out six inches then say, "We are making progress."
Nikki Giovanni said, "It is not about who you attend school with, it is about who controls the school you attend."
Walter L. Hudson Sr./Chairman
National Awareness Alliance
Penns Grove, New Jersey
Instead of focusing on Dr. Massare, maybe you should focus on the families of these children who are so far behind educationally. The most critical years for a child's education are from birth to age 5.
ReplyDeleteMy son just finished preschool in the PG-CP school district. When he started, at the age of 4, he already knew every letter of the alphabet both upper and lower case, all of the shapes and colors along with many other things. There were 15 children in his class. Eleven of them could not recognize all of the upper case letters, many did not know all of the shapes or colors. You know why my son knew those things? It's because his education is important to me and I taught him those things at home. You want to know why the other children did not know those things? In many of the cases it was because their parents did not teach them. They wait until the children are in school for them to receive any kind of education. Because of this they are missing out on a very critical learning period.
I've worked in this district and I can attest to the fact that there is a tremendous lack of parental involvement. I know you have/had children at Lafayette-Pershing. Do you know how hard it is to get parents to volunteer their time to help with any activities that benefit the children? Do you know that in all of the schools in the district, it's often very difficult to get parents to show up for parent/teacher conferences?
Did you know that there are students who come to school without having done their homework because they say their parents can't afford pencils and yet that very same child will tell you about all of the expensive video games that they have? Priorities in some of these families seem incredibly misplaced.
Yes, the dropout rate is high. Do you think that's only the fault of the district? If so, then you're seriously misguided. The fault also lies with families. They don't value education. They don't push their children to become educated. They don't get involved and remain involved with the education of their children. Education needs to be a partnership between the schools and families. Neither one of these will be successful without the other.
Does the school need reform? Absolutely! Are there serious problems in our educational system? Hell yes! Is the school system the sole problem? Absolutely not!
Until families become involved, until fathers stop walking out on their children, until parents decide to make their child's education a number 1 priority nothing the school does will be successful.
I suggest refocusing some of your attention to where it's also needed. Focus it on the children's most formative years, the years before they even enter the school district.
I agree on some things that you said. Accountability is share on all aspects of the people in the community as well as leadership. You can't speak for other families as far as work goes on within their house. You do know economy is still not improving and also in the national statistics of unemployment, we are still over 8 percent and then in the african american community we are still double unemployed 16.4 percent.. If you don't understand the affects of unemployment in the snowball effect that happens in homes then you are clearly misguided and blind. As a veteran of the military, when you are a captain in the military in charge of a unit, it is the captain responsibility to make sure his unit is self sufficient and operating in a affective matter to complete an able to withstand any missions. When there is conflict with in the company it is the captains job to find out what it is and see to it is correct. So in this particular case the superintendent have put so many bandages problems instead of finding out what the problem is and correcting it now the old sores are opening and it's up to the ceo of the school district to help unify the parents the students the administration the board members and president to come together and do a correct these problems when you have a problem such as this the mission is to educate and graduate and prepare the students for the complex challenges and success of the world. Thats not happening in the school district but the superintendent is so gung ho about making sure how many oz wife collect over 200,000 dollars out the community without doing their job... that's not a leader and that's not a true leader and I would tell the superintendent that. Yet advocate for the ceo of the school district why because he has hired you?
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