Abbey Bean of Woolwich represented a group of about 20 parents of Woolwich Central School fourth-graders as she raised concerns about student safety and learning Monday at a Regional School Unit 1 school board meeting. (Darcie Moore / The Times Record)
BATH — A group of parents called on the Regional School Unit 1 school board to take steps to improve poor test performance and rein in behavioral problems at two district schools.
Abbey Bean of Woolwich represented a group of more than 20 parents of fourth graders Monday night when she read a statement to the school board outlining their concerns about student behavior at Woolwich Central School.
Her son, Sam, started going to Woolwich Central School this school year. The school serves grades pre-K to Grade 8.
“He has grown to hate school and says every day that he does not want to go,” Bean said. “His complaints include physical harm, being kicked and punched by another student, and having such a loud, chaotic classroom that he is unable to hear what he is expected to at times, let alone engage as he would like to.”
He also complains of students consistently yelling, swearing and disrespecting their teachers.
This experience is not limited to her son, she said.
“From what we can understand, it sounds like there are too many students with behavior challenges in this fourth-grade class that affect the classroom at large,” Bean said.
She called for the school district to fund a behavioral interventionist for the next school year or the following year. It’s a problem not limited to the fourth-grade class, she argued, adding that other Woolwich families have placed their middle school students elsewhere due to these same concerns.
Superintendent Patrick Manuel didn’t respond to Bean’s concerns during the meeting. In an email to The Times Record, he stated that the school district has implemented initiatives to support a safe and respectful learning environment. These include adding a K-12 behavioral support program, developing a “response to intervention system” that provides student behavior support and adding guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, interventionists and support staff.
“These steps have been beneficial, but we still have work to do,” he said. “We continue to explore other programming and professional development to help address this topic.”
Karen D’Silva, who has a fourth-grader who attends Fisher Mitchell School in Bath, said she is alarmed at the low test scores of students attending that school. Just over 75% of students were below or well below the state expectations for English language arts and literacy in the Maine Educational Assessments. And 80% performed below or well below the state expectation in math.
RSU 1 schools aren’t alone in their struggles to meet state expectations on standardized tests, according to Maine Department of Education data. In 2017-18, just 50% of all students in the state met or exceeded expectations for the MEA in English language arts; 59% in science; and 37% in math.
“This is a really difficult thing for a parent to have to do, to get up and call out on something that they’re upset about or feel like they have a concern for,” D’Silva said. “I know it’s difficult to hear the criticism on the other side.”
But it’s about the kids, she said.
Karen D’Silva of Bath speaks about low test scores at Fischer Mitchell School during the Regional School Unit 1 school board meeting Monday night. (Darcie Moore / The Times Record)
“We have two big problems at Fisher Mitchell,” D’Silva said. “The behavior — which ties into exactly what Woolwich parents are describing, and then what is related to the behavior is the low academic performance. How can you have 80% of a class that’s also disruptive finishing out the whole curriculum of the school year when so many are behind? How can the poor teachers teach what they need to?”
It’s a point D’Silva said she’s been before the school board pushing for a year and a half.
“We’re here today because we don’t see any action from the school board, from the school, from the district, and we don’t understand why,” she said. “We understand that there’s a new curriculum in the budget which is awesome. … We’re also really excited that there is help for teacher in coaching.”
The test scores she discussed Monday were those of third graders last year who were pushed into fourth grade, she said, “and we’re about to push them all into fifth grade. How is this acceptable?”
Having her fourth-grader come home needing quiet time because his class was so loud and out of control is not acceptable either, she said.
“This is a personal issue? You bet it is. These are our babies,” she said. “And it should be personal for you too because this is our community.”
D’Silva, a board member of the Bath Elementary PTA, told The Times Record she and other parents have raised their concern about the low MEA test scores in the past, with teachers, the principal and the superintendent.
“Whenever we’ve brought up this question: ‘Why aren’t you worried about this,’ basically the school administration has been like, ‘Well, this isn’t really an important test and we have more effective tests that help us understand what’s really going on in the schools,'” she said.
However, it’s the test used to measure what students are learning, she said. At the end of the day, “if your kids aren’t performing well, we need to know that and can’t fix that unless you understand that.”
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