DE Parents and Teachers for Public Ed.

March 12, 2015

Eve Buckley, Comments: RCEA/CEA Press Conf., Warner Elementary School

I am a Christina district parent and a founding member of the grassroots organization
Delaware Parents and Teachers for Public Education. We are a new and growing
group, affiliated with Parents Across America and the Network for Public Education.
DE P and T for Public Ed supports democratically run Public Schools that welcome
all children and aim to meet each childs educational needs and strengths. We
advocate for proven educational reforms such as small class sizes, extended school
days for low income and at-risk students, summer enrichment for students who need
it, and quality preschool for all children. We believe that local, taxpayer control of
publicly funded schools leads to the best outcomes for the communities they serve.

We are here tonight to give our support to Delawares public school teachers, who
have been hampered in their efforts to serve children by recent priorities and policies
of Delawares Dept Of Education. Our DOE should be a supportive resource for
educators, not a policy dictator. As this states (and countrys) exploding opt out
movement attests, high-stakes testing, high-cost data analysis with little classroom
relevance, and standardized curricula are not what the majority of parents and
taxpayers want for public schools.

Classroom teachers are our childrens primary educatorsafter ourselvesand we

believe they should be respected as trained professionals. This means giving them the
autonomy to respond to the needs and intellectual interests of the children they teach,
without needless and distracting state-mandated requirements. It means providing

sufficient resources for teachers to do their jobs, and recognizing that schools with
the highest-needs children require additional resources to help their students succeed.

Many of the Delaware DOEs policies, and the sanctions they have imposed against
school districts that refuse to comply with them, are counter-productive. They do not
serve the departments central mission as a public agency. This has been starkly
apparent during the ongoing priority schools debate, which has sapped the energy
and student-focus of educators on the front lines of Delawares struggle with child
poverty and the stresses that impoverished children suffer.

DE Parents and Teachers for Public Education are proud to stand in support of
our childrens teachers, and in opposition to a state education authority that
compounds the challenges of their work.

Finally: given the obstacles Delaware parents and teachers have faced in recent
months, when petitioning the DOE to acknowledge and address community
concerns, it is HIGH time that our states Board of Education become an elected
body. The state board, which oversees a growing number of schools funded by local
property taxes, is too powerful now to be governor-appointed. It should mirror our
local school boards, which are comprised of elected taxpayer representatives.

Thank you for this opportunity to be heard.