Last night's DPS meeting at East High - notes from FB

Also see more here.

Joyce Madrid-Andrews
I attended the East/Manual merger meeting tonight...They are not being truthful. During the Q&A session, A gentlemen commented that he attended the Manual community meeting last week, and it was mentioned at that meeting that a proposal was made from teachers, students, and parents from Manual. Greta Martinez, interim assistant superintendent said they have not seen any other proposals. Well, that is not the truth. My son, who is senior class president at Manual, and fellow classmates hand delivered a part of this proposal to Greta Martinez. Again, Manual and it's kids are an afterthought for this district. There is no such thing as a fair equality education for the Manual community.

Traci L. Jones

Just a reminder about the East parent meeting tonight. I just received this e-mail "Please get everyone you know to come to this meeting. I have been to 2 meeting about this at Manual and it's a real mess. I am distrustful that this is completely a proposal from Andy and the Manual interim (place holder) principal, Don Roy. My experience tells me this is a DPS driven mess and Andy is a pawn in the game.

Andy did have designs on having 9th grade at Manual starting in fall 2015 and was intending to submit a proposal this Feb to that effect. DPS said no, that Manual didn't want East there and was working on their own proposals. East backed away.

Then in Feb/March DPS received 7 million from the Federal Depart of Labor to install STEM programs in schools. Suddenly DPS came back to East asking for their proposal to be submitted. It has since morphed and been combined to support 2 STEM tracks going into Manual. The STEM programs need about 100-150 per grade starting in 10th to make them successful. Hence let's use East's draw and allow the traditional 9th grade to grow to about 800. At Manual all 9th graders would be exposed to sample STEM classes and at the end of the year students would choose to do the STEM track or traditional East classes.

STEM has been portrayed as vocational and a guarantee to community college and some 4 year colleges in state (no out of state). Questions have also arisen as to HS students not being prepared for rigorous math, science, and engineering classes.

Students cannot go in and out of STEM classes: you either take all or none.

Eventually our 9th graders would be at Manual and there would be 100+ 10th, 11th and 12th graders at Manual in the STEM classes so not sure what benefit it is to have our 9th graders with upper classmen there vs upper classmen at East.

This is not a well thought out proposal, nor does it or will it have the full positive marketing by DPS to be successful. Costs will extremely high and DPS will only use per pupil funds and add no more towards add'l admin. costs. WHEN this fails, it will be East's failure of Manual, and not DPS's failure of Manual. This is not a good thing. "

There is a lot of information that needs to be addressed and hopefully we can get some answers tonight! If you have a fifth, six, or seventh you should definitely try to come!