Editor, Townsman:
I am perplexed and disappointed by the recent remarks made by Lisa Glickstein, the public schools' grant writer, concerning the federal grant proposal, "Race to the Top." In her Feb. 11 letter, she indicated, "I am not aware of any published information from the state or federal government indicating the amount of an award to an individual district from this program."
The state's Department of Education has made available to all stake holders the amount of each district's possible financial award. Because of Andover's significant wealth, our district was eligible for up to 15 percent of the $211,715 of FY 2010 Title 1 funds. This amount is $29,909. This data is available at http://www.doe.mass.edu/nclb/grant/.
This is the first time Andover educators have decided against supporting a possible increase in revenue for our schools. As I indicated in a Jan. 21 letter, "we believe that the grant would send learning toward mediocrity." The grant would require that teacher evaluations be tied to compensation. Thus teachers would be assessed through the performance of our students. We would be embarking upon the establishment of a structure which desires to measure each student as an assembly line product so that a base line can be constructed to evaluate teachers. I am disappointed our grant writer fails to understand that as educators we do not view our students as products to be manufactured on an assembly line so that they can grow into dissociated automatons. Instead, we would like to invite Glickstein and all of the stake holders to work with us to help cultivate a thirst for knowledge and to foster students' creative passions so that they can pursue rich productive lives.
Finally, I am perplexed as to why our grant writer mentions that by voting against the grant Andover foregoes opportunities for "collaborations projects with other districts that are eligible for funding and perhaps opportunities to generate revenue by offering training or professional development to other districts." These ideas have been fostered by our union for the past 20 years. We have placed them in our formal bargaining proposals. I hope her intent in writing was not to simply join forces with a few individuals whose goal is to denigrate educators whenever possible. Such actions do not help to foster the innovative learning environment we need to be striving towards in Andover.
Tom MEyers
Lawrence
President, Andover Education Association
