Mount Pleasant Quality of Education

By William Metzler

Priorities must better reflect the challenges to be met in the world beyond the local school system

In the history of Westlake HS four times the locker rooms have been redone after destruction thru uncaring student misuse. Meanwhile, until recently, the still severely inadequately-sized science classrooms and labs had never been upgraded.

District policy mandates class size minimums of 15 students but, at taxpayer expense, athletic teams of fewer members are supported at district expense.

The long-term policy of accelerating students in science has produced a self-defeating dearth of AP science students, less than 15 percent, while the district philosophy of "failure is not an option" causes students to avoid the challenges of rigorous cognitive science courses. The program has become a self-promoting tradition of accelerating the unprepared to accentuate the problem when they expectedly encounter difficulty. Recent removal and then reinstitution, after vociforous community protest, of the elementary science specialist, shows the BOE indifference to the problem.