Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

Opposes four-day school week

Posted 3/2/22

To the Editor :

The front page article in The Fayette Advertiser, titled “Fayette ACT Scores Drop Significantly” was well written. I happened to present these same statistics to the …

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Opposes four-day school week

Posted

To the Editor:

The front page article in The Fayette Advertiser, titled “Fayette ACT Scores Drop Significantly” was well written. I happened to present these same statistics to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, in my oral argument on February 9, 2022, in my appeal of the dismissal of the Lehmann v. Fayette R3 Board of Education case by the Circuit Court in Howard County in the summer of 2021.  

I began this pilgrimage after the Fayette school community exhausted all of the normal methods to try to stop the implementation of the 4 day school week and then to try to get the decision of the Board reversed after it was made.

The first public sign of resistance was the large majority vote to pass a new tax levy increase in April, 2019, after Superintendent Tamara Kimball proposed adopting the 4 day school week structure (calendar) in 2018 to save money in a “cash strapped” district, and after the School Board voted down the 4 day option in January, 2019 as a condition to get the tax levy increase passed.

But the new Superintendent, Jill Wiseman, ignored the understood “deal” struck between Board, Kimball, and community that if the tax levy passed, then the 4 day week would not be necessary, and ignored the will of the people.  She, and allies on the Board, revived the campaign, begun and encouraged under Kimball's tenure in the summer and fall of 2019. 

An active push back in opposition to this broken promise ensued with numerous letters to the editor by parents, district taxpayers, and educators, pointing out the damages that the 4 day week would cause to the educational achievement potential of the students and to the social and economic health and even safety of parents and of the community.

This group also presented a petition to stop the 4 day school week with 289 signatures of tax payers in the district to the fateful Board meeting in November, 2019. But with no discussion and without fanfare or ceremony, the Board voted to adopt and implement the 4 day school week calendar, requiring a fundamental change in the work week structure of the community, for the school year of 2020-21.

Then COVID-19 struck and shined the light on the need for students to be physically in school “5” days a week to avoid a suppression of their development as human beings through the educational structure.  To remove one day or 20% of a child's exposure to the educational process could be damaging to that child development into adulthood. That lost opportunity to expose children to education, on a weekly basis, cannot be recaptured even at the end of the school year, so the professional leaders in education say.

I organized a meeting of interested citizens in December, 2019, to discuss options remaining to us. The consensus of the group was to press our case through the electoral process, and I offered the lawsuit route as a back up if electing a majority Board favoring the 5 day week structure, who could change the Board vote, did not work. That strategy did not work in the end.

In the 2020 elections, delayed from April to June 2, because of the pandemic, the well qualified incumbent, Larry Anderson, was soundly defeated simply because he strongly supported the 4 day week decision, and Shaun Young, outspoken opponent of the 4 day week, was soundly re-elected to the Board. And the two newcomers to the board, Sarah Wies and Aaron Bentley, had also declared their opposition to the 4 day week. Skip Vandelicht, also a strong opponent to the 4 day week in the minority position on the Board, was elected president of the Board after the June 2, election.

So now the majority of the Board is opposed to the 4 day school week, and nothing has happened to make the change back, even after the school system has stabilized in the ongoing pandemic.

The results are in, as presented in the ACT decline article, where the average ACT score for Fayette R3 “dropped” nearly 3 points in it first year of operations with the 4 day week in 2020-21. However, the other two county schools, New Franklin and Glasgow, both 5 day schools operating in the same pandemic conditions, each saw their average ACT scores rise by 2 points each.  Some how the clear message of the damage caused by the 4 day school week on the future of our students and on our society is not resonating with Jill Wiseman and the Board.

Where are you, Skip Vandelicht and Shauna Young, in your pledges, to get elected to the Board, to correct the situation once the evidence is in? Jill Wiseman, your excuses and explanations as to why the test scores declined so dramatically do not mesh with the proven reality that it is the 4 day school week structure that is harmful to the future of our students. Your credibility is weakened by the fact that your own daughter is safely attending the 5 day program in New Franklin.

My lawsuit has failed so far, for multiple reasons, including my lack of legal skills to navigate the legal system as a pro se litigant. It is a tragic shame that the 4 day school week is legal and currently not opposed by the Missouri Constitution. But how many children will have to be deprived of the opportunity to achieve their full potential before educators and local school board members will realize what they have done to the future of our country?    

Sincerely, Paul Lehmann, Fayette “educator” and
current litigator

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here