Letter: Instructional coaches should be budget priority

Posted 2/5/19

To the editor:

School Committee’s first priority should be the needs of school administrators not later start time.

For at least the third year in a row school administrators have …

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Letter: Instructional coaches should be budget priority

Posted

To the editor:

School Committee’s first priority should be the needs of school administrators not later start time.

For at least the third year in a row school administrators have requested additional instructional coaches for the k-5 schools. Instructional coaches help teachers focus on their individual needs in the classroom, find resources to help bring growth in teaching and learning, and they can help teachers get to a place where they are sharing best practices with one another. 

School administrators have seen the positive educational gains using instructional coaches. After getting a grant to cover a full time instructional coach at Primrose Hill, the LA proficiency went from 55 percent to 74 percent. Now they want to build on that momentum. That is a good return on investment (ROI) for Barrington taxpayers with actual data from our own students. Any increase in the school budget should go towards educational growth. Even though Barrington is the best public high school in Rhode Island we still are lagging neighboring Massachusetts.

The ROI information about the later start time initiative presented in last week’s article is misleading. The research that was done was based on the assumption that all schools, in the 47 states used in the analysis, shifted to an 8:30 a.m. or later start time.

Since Barrington would be the only school in Rhode Island to have their high school start at 8:30 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. the ROI information is irrelevant. 

The analysis also reports the reason for economic gains is an increase high school graduation rates. Well, Barrington High School already has a 97 percent graduation rate with only a 1.4 percent dropout rate. The School Committee has not laid out their specific expectations from this initiative other than they feel students will get more sleep. 

Actually, it looks like the later start time initiative will have a negative financial economic impact on Barrington residents who will now need to pay for after school care since younger students will be dismissed before older students. Barrington teachers will also incur daycare expenses. Barrington taxpayers deserve better. Our teachers deserve better. 

Teachers know what our students need for educational growth and later school start times is not one of them. How can we expect teachers to perform if the School Committee decides to spend our money on an initiative they want and not what our educators have said they need?

Lisa Daft

Barrington

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