Buchanan-Verplanck Elementary: “School in Need of Improvement”

Two weeks ago parents in the Hendrick Hudson School District received a letter stating that the district will not be sending class lists until Sept. 2 this year because they now have to transfer some students from Buchanan-Verplanck Elementary School to Frank G. Lindsey and Furnace Woods.

B-V did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) last year, as measured by New York State, which has led the state to designate the elementary school as a “school in need of improvement,” under the No Child Left Behind Act.  Because of this, the state requires the district to offer parents of students at B-V the “Public Choice Option” to transfer their kids to either Furnace Woods or Frank G. Lindsey elementary schools.

About 40 parents have asked for a transfer according to Hendrick Hudson School District Superintendent Dr. Daniel McCann.

“Some parents felt they were unhappy with the designation the state placed on the school because of the one group (that did not meet AYP) and welcomed the opportunity to transfer,” McCann said. “All requests were granted and the students were placed in an economical way and with a sense of equity.”

McCann said the school district has been working diligently since Aug. 9 when the state released the results of the standardized tests (which included the news about B-V) to accommodate all requests and restructure classes to promote a balanced economic environment. Parents had to place request for transfers by Aug. 23.

Class lists were originally planned to be mailed on Aug. 26, but now students will not know who their teachers are or what to buy for class until this Friday or Saturday the earliest. School starts next Tuesday, Sept. 6.

“We have apologized that timing is late but it is the state that was late in getting us our results,” McCann said. “The timing is inconvenient for all of us.”

B-V did not make AYP because Students with Disabilities in one group did not score high enough in English Language Arts for the third year in the row. The school notes that the results are based on a sub-group that contains 30 or more students within one school building. Only BV had a group large enough to be reported and students in that group actually came from all three schools in the district, McCann said. Until this year, all the ICT classes in grades 3-5 were in BV and the primary ICT classes were at FGL. The district is restructuring to ensure that ICT classes are more evenly distributed between schools.

“The oddity of this is that the students in that one group were from all three schools and many made great progress,” McCann said. “I am proud of the progress many of the students did make.”

The letter sent to all parents on Aug. 24, signed by school Superintendent Daniel McCann, Assistant Superintendent Alice Gottlieb, and the three school principals, states:

“As we add children to our classes, we need to maintain a balanced class structure.  Children of all abilities and characteristics are placed in each group to promote a balanced academic environment.”

The district attributes the inconvenient timing and situation to a “major flaw in the (state’s education) system,” namely the No Child Left Behind Act.

In an email to Patch, school board president Marion Walsh wrote:

“While we clearly recognize the need for more support for our students, we also do not believe that the designation of ‘school in need of improvement’ is reflective of our Buchanan-Verplanck School or our District. However, we welcome this challenge to improve and to help our students. The mark of any just society, as noted by John Rawls in a Theory of Justice, is reflected on how it helps its most vulnerable members, and this is certainly true in a school district.  At Hen Hud, we plan to turn this challenge into an opportunity. We will be looking at more support, better methodology, ways to encourage parental involvement, and we may consider some creative ways to end some of the socio-economic segregation of B-V.”

Walsh also quotes the author of The Death and Life of the Great American School  System, Diane Ravitch, once a proponent of the NCLB and now an opponent, who writes that the Act is a “punitive law based on erroneous assumptions on how to improve school systems.”

The district is holding an informational meeting on the situation tonight, Aug. 31 at 7 p.m. in the Frank G. Lindsey cafeteria.

Daniel McCann, Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Alice Gottlieb, Assistant Superintendent, and Ms. Kathleen Coughlin, Director of Pupil Personnel Services, will be there to explain the situation and answer questions.  Topics that will be covered include:

• New York State regulations for schools designated “in need of improvement.”
• The Public School Choice legal requirements and process
• Class sizes in all three schools
• Guidelines for assigning transferring B-V students to classes in FGL or FW
• The future: plans to increase achievement for all of our students

Check back with Patch for coverage of the meeting.

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