Pine-Richland Strategic Plan Voted Down. Was this a good thing?
Executive Summary: Some reasons why the Strategic Plan was voted down:
The emphasis on Social and Emotional Learning and use of a universal screener takes time away from core academics and requires teachers perform roles outside the scope of their profession.
Workforce Development includes Culturally Relative and Sustaining Education that focuses on unconscious bias, teachers removing curriculum in the classroom, and oversteps the role of parents.
There is a lack of specific language or emphasis that seeks to address the learning loss of students that occurred during the pandemic lockdowns.
On May 22, 2023, the Pine-Richland School Board voted down the Strategic Plan after months of work and effort. Was voting “NO” the right decision for our community? YES, it absolutely was the correct decision. Let me explain why and also explain what the school Strategic Plan is all about.
One brave mom encapsulated the concerns that many addressed over several months with her thoughtful statement, “The Strategic Plan is a collection of priorities not supported by data that loosely covers the WHAT without the WHY or the HOW…What measurement are we using? Who is ultimately accountable? We have been given NO empirical data or insight or ways to improve.”
The Strategic Plan serves as the map for the district and is built with input from stakeholders. Over the last nine months, public school board meetings and joint governance meetings have been held as an opportunity for planning and discussion of the strategic plan. The original intent of a strategic plan is for schools to review their methods and look for areas to improve. Over the last number of years, however, there has been an effort from the PDE to push requirements into the local school district’s strategic plan. These requirements take local control away and usurp the long understood importance of parent partnerships in their child’s education in an effort to supplant social and cultural ideology into the education system.
Pine-Richland developed a steering committee formed of administrators, school psychologists, operations and communications directors and school board members. There was one individual that represented the teacher’s voice on the steering committee, who also serves as the Pine-Richland Education Association (Union) President. The lack of teacher involvement is important to note, since teachers will be the most affected in the implementation process of the approved plan. Their voice is essential to this process. The Strategic Plan covered 6 areas;
1) Teaching and Learning,
2) Student Progress and Engagement
3) Workforce Development,
4) Finance and Operation
5) Pursuit of Excellence and
6) Communications.
The Administration held three Town Halls to gather feedback from the community on the plan. During the time required for the community to give feedback, parents went to Town Halls and school board meetings to speak to their concerns over several areas of the plan. Those concerns ranged from specific details within the plan to the process in which the plan was devised.
In the Student Progress and Engagement section, one hot topic that was mentioned several times was the introduction of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). The plan included pushing SEL throughout all academic periods of a student’s day. No longer will math simply be learning facts and figures, but as one Assistant Superintendent described, teachers will now be seeking to engage students on their interest levels to get “buy in” for doing their math lessons. CASEL defines SEL as “...an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.” (https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/) Along with these social skills being taught during class time, they will also be screened and their emotional abilities measured throughout the year.
A significant part of SEL is the use of a universal screener. In Pine-Richland, they plan to use a survey system called Satchel Pulse, where students would take surveys and the software collects the data and gives a score of their social and emotional capabilities. Screenings would happen twice a year by the students but up to four times a year by the teachers. This would require that on top of teachers needing to make Individualized Education Plan (IEP) accommodations, and create new lesson plans to promote “buy-in” with student interests, they will also need to be screening students for their mental and emotional abilities. This is outside of the scope and professional education for teachers to perform. This is no less than a theft of your students' education. When teachers are more focused on the emotional and social skills of the students in their classes, that inherently takes time away from learning the actual material needed to master the subject matter. SEL is a tool to place cultural ideology within every classroom without the consent or knowledge of parents. There is no empirical data that gives evidence that SEL will improve academic learning of students within the district.
The second issue found in the Strategic Plan was the elevation of Culturally Relative and Sustain Education (CR-SE) within the Workforce Services section. CR-SE is a list of 9 new competencies within workforce development sent down by the PDE, that would require diversity, equity and inclusion for all professional development for teachers. CR-SE requires teachers to believe in microaggressions, change lesson plans based on unconscious bias and oversteps the roles of the parent, requiring teachers to insert themselves to influence students politically instead of educationally. One board member gave pushback during the May 22nd board meeting citing concerns that CR-SE is currently under litigation from 3 school districts, parents, school directors and teachers, citing first amendment violations. The Pennsylvania Department of Education, in response to the litigation, stated that they will not be requiring these 9 competencies within districts. With this type of controversy, voluntarily adding CR-SE into our Strategic Plan is unwise.
There has been a considerable amount of concern for families around the learning loss that occurred during the pandemic. Remote learning was not beneficial for the majority of students and standardized test scores have not bounced back to pre-pandemic standards. (For details, refer to the recent PRKidsFirst blog titled “Academic Performance Needs Turnaround”). The Pine-Richland Strategic Plan does not include specific language that addresses this learning loss. When a school’s intended purpose is to adequately educate students in preparation for their next step, the setback in learning that this generation of students experienced deserves to be a top priority from our school administrators.
While the effort of making the Town Halls available to all and gathering feedback from the community is put in place to make the community feel heard and a part of the process, little of the feedback given at the Town Halls or at board meetings were ever addressed or used to make changes of the plan, leaving those who took time out of their day, from work or family, feeling as though the process was a farce. A very narrow view was the end result taken from the community. In Pine-Richland 80% of the school budget comes from local taxes. This means that the biggest stakeholders in our local education are the taxpayers. Yes, the Strategic Plan was, as one community member put it, “under-cooked chicken” and it was important that the brave school directors voted it down to ensure that what is being planned for our students for the next six years is fully thought out and developed.
