To the editor:

Open letter to the taxpayers of Little Compton …

On October 11, I attended the Little Compton school committee meeting. I would like to share a brief overview from my perspective of what was covered in the agenda.

1. Item 4.1 Teacher and Administrator of the Year goes to Jen Segala and Heather Fitzgerald — congratulations ladies.

2. 4.3 PARRC update; RIDE has stated, “We are excited to announce that beginning in spring 2018, Rhode Island will be administering the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS) in grade 3-8 in English Language Arts and mathematics.”

Has this new test RICAS been validated? By whom? When? Methods? After all these years the PARRC test is still not validated. The fact that this change in testing has been made was not made known at the meeting! The school attorney said there is no law to opt out of testing. Well there is no law that says students must take the test. Yes, you can opt your child out of this data mining test that snoops into a family's private life by social engineers at the state level. Want to see what our scores were on the testing for 2017 (search ‘everything you need to know about Rhode Island’s 2017 PARCC scores’) and see that the testing was poor at best. Per WPRI article, the math or ELA didn’t move between 2016 and 2017. On the math side, the proficiency rate remains 33% and on ELA, it was 40%. Really, this is what you call rigorous? If you don’t trust the news check out Rhode Island Department of Education and see what they show for scores.

3. 6.1 Results of surveys: With both the PARRC testing from 2017 and the State Family School Relationship survey 2017, your school committee has so much information to drill down to improve our school, yet they are still determined to get more surveys. How? By hiring former teachers to call parents and ask specific questions. There is no validity to asking two or three questions personally of parents. With the information on the two documents just mentioned there is a plethora of ways to improve the school! Superintendent Power saw the flaws in this personal survey, addressed them at the meeting and did not present any results of the personal survey. Thank you Dr. Power.

4. 10.1 Pilot program: And finally, did you know the school committee agreed to spend $5,440 for a pilot program from November to March for someone at Portsmouth High School to supervise our young men and women from 3-5 p.m. in the school library. School ends at 1:55 p.m. Our students are in high school and should not need this service as members of the Portsmouth High School community; they should be responsible for themselves. Students from Portsmouth do not need this babysitting and neither should students from Little Compton. We have a late bus for students at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.; now we will add a babysitting service. Every taxpayer should be outraged by this expenditure. So, what our school committee is saying is that our children cannot be trusted to be unsupervised at their high school, yet Portsmouth High School personnel do not feel a need to babysit their children.

Please attend your school committee meetings, get involved, make a change.

Peg Bugara

Little Compton