Our parent-teacher conference

Thursday, Paddy and I met with Sarah's Kindergarten teacher. Though we'd had conferences with her St. Mary's Early Childhood Development Center (ECDC) teachers in the past, this seemed more like the "big time".

Sarah is in a two and a half hour session, in a class of twenty kids. Pad and I were greatly impressed at the level of detail in her teacher's assessment of our daughter's progress.

Either the time slot after us had not been filled, or the parents were no-shows. In any case, this afforded me a chance to talk with Sarah's teacher about some broader issues. By the way, I didn't ask the teacher's permission to use his/her name - so I'm not going to. I'll just use "The Teacher".

The Teacher is a long serving, highly skilled, really impressive person. Not surprising to find at Hay School. The school has the highest percentage of "Highly Qualified Teachers" as determined by the National No Child Left Behind Act in the SBCSC. Hay pioneered the Wilson LiPS reading program in the SBCSC - which has been wildly successful. Everyone there is immensely proud that Hay has acheived Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals four years running.

But Hay has new challenges this year.

Nearby Hamiliton was converted to a Traditional Magnet program. I thought we'd researched our options pretty thoroughly, but we missed this one. At any rate, the enrollment was cut off earlier than many folks in the neighborhood expected - and their children were assigned to Hay. This has led to a weird situation of undersized classes at Hamilton and a lot of pissed off parents at Hay.

Additionally, many Monroe area parents opted to shift their children to Hay. Monroe is on probationary status, and their students will be shifted to Studebaker for the second semester. And Hay has an ongoing relationship with Wilson (on the west side) of accepting students from that district.

As a result, Hay was forced to create four new classes about a week into the school year. The school's plenty big enough - but there are other challenges.

So this has created a level of chaos this high functioning institution is unaccustomed to. The Teacher noted that discipline issues have really become prominent. One incident mentioned was a Kindergartner biting another child.

The Teacher mentioned that the school had responded by tightening its requirements for children's behavior. I was left with the impression that Hay School is up to the task.

I mentioned to The Teacher that I was highly sympathetic to the discomfort suffered by the academic professionals at Hay. On the other hand, I couldn't help thinking that dispersing hard to manage students into successful environments might be be a recipe for successful outcomes. It's a lot to ask, I know. But breaking up challenged groups into more promising situations could be just the thing.

PS.. The Teacher and I also discussed ways that the State is sabotaging good Kindergarten practices. More on that later.