School calendar concerns
To the editor:
I am a parent of an elementary student and I am expressing my concerns of SAD 1 directors’ consideration to correlate the elementary school schedule with the high school. I appreciate and understand the need for budget cuts but I feel this will have a severe impact on our children’s education, especially children in early elementary.
Teachers don’t even allow parents to volunteer in the classroom for the first month as it usually takes that amount of time for the children to adjust. It would be a huge setback for their learning process to ask the children to take a three-week break after just learning the school and classroom rules. Children of this age forget quickly and thus they will require another adjustment period. This results in a loss of valuable teaching time.
Since SAD 1 changed to NECAP testing which occurs in October the teachers will not have much time to prepare the children for this testing. As any preparation done in early September no doubt will be forgotten. It will not be fair to the children to have lower scores because of the harvest.
I appreciate the need to maintain the tradition of harvest time in northern Maine but I feel three weeks is too long considering the percentage of students who actually work in the fields has drastically reduced over the years. My suggestion would be to cut the harvest time to one week and then correlate the elementary schools and the high school schedules. This would keep the harvest tradition, reduce busing costs and have the least impact on our children’s education.
I hope the SAD 1 board of directors will take my concerns and suggestion into consideration with their decision.
Presque Isle