BISD INTERIM SUPERINTENDENT DISCUSSES SURVEY RESULTS, NEW FAQ PAGE IN THURSDAY BRIEFING
Brenham ISD Interim Superintendent Huey Kinchen went over the results of the recently completed survey given to parents and staff, along with concerns from those two groups, in a Facebook address Thursday.
Kinchen said the survey, which concluded last Friday, had an “overwhelming response”, with almost 3,500 parent responses and nearly 500 results from staff members. In addition, Kinchen said there were 126 pages of comments from parents, asking questions and giving their opinions about the opening of schools.
Kinchen pointed out three comments in particular that exemplified the range of opinion displayed by parents on the opening of schools.
For both the parent and staff responses, Kinchen said the top concern was health and safety, while the second highest concern for staff was training and preparation. Ultimately, he said this is what led the district to delay the start of school from August 19th to August 25th.
Kinchen said after meeting with assistant superintendents, principals, and members of the Teacher Advisory Group, one area of concern all three groups had was having enough time to train teachers and staff for the opening of schools. He said in order to provide more time for training, the school start date needed to be pushed back. He said the district chose a four-day delay to allow time for training, but to also minimize the impact on the school calendar.
Kinchen said it was evident after consulting the survey responses that a Frequently Asked Questions page was necessary to not only improve communications, but also help parents decide what form of instruction they want for their child.
The FAQ page is now available on the Brenham ISD website.
Early next week, the district will begin rolling out commitment forms, asking parents whether they want their child to attend school remotely or in person. Kinchen said the commitment forms differ from the survey in that while the district was seeking information from parents to plan for the upcoming school year in the survey, the commitment forms will have parents locking in their choice for instruction for one grading period. He said the district will work to make sure a quality education is provided no matter what choice is made.
What is 4extra days? How can you inform or teach about something so serious in 4 days? Will you making these decisions be in the classroom with the teachers and students? Do yal want to make the kids parents and teachers to be in a jailhouse institutionalize scene with everything else they have to worry about. You are not giving the community enough voice.
Almost 3,500 parent responses for a district of roughly 5,000 students is plenty of community voice. The teachers are understanding of the 4 days to maneuver the in-class and virtual learning environments. Everyone has an opinion on this, but options are available and the parents will ultimately choose. Maybe you should be upset that the rumor is teachers won’t be getting any cost-of-living type raise this year WITH the additional hardships of teaching in this environment. I know, I know…taxes would be raised and that would upset more folks.
Washington County taxes are pretty low compared to many of the surrounding areas. Teachers are getting extra things pushed on them with same pay. Even some companies were able to offer pay raises during a pandemic for essential workers. If teachers are so essential, why no pay increases? I wholeheartedly believe they should see an increase.
The federal government sent the state 1.2 billion dollars to help schools prepare. This was to help with transportation, training, custodial, nursing staff, PPE, technology, etc….
The state responded by allocating that money to districts, but subtracting threat same amount from the state contribution. So basically the state worked a loophole to keep federal money allocated to public schools.
Teachers don’t need to anything except teach the subject they assigned.
You are not parents, not even in their absence. Whoever says different needs to find and fund their own education. You are not funded nor expected by the taxpayers to do anything different, regardless of what the communist left wants or has a brat trantrum about. This is fair and equal!
Yes. Do your job, or move out of the way for newer, non jaded teachers.
The big problem with education today is the Teacher Unions.
They keep bad teachers on the job and good ones off.
This whole Covid-19 mess is much more smoke than fire.
Get back in there and teach our kids.
If you are compromised or scared than please stay home, there are plenty of new first year teachers who would lobea job.