All tagged WSSD
As a mom, grandmother, and longtime teacher, I had hoped that the district’s Covid safety plan would mandate masks for all K-12 students and adults while on school premises or transportation. My main concern with the plan that the district recently adopted is the phrase “should wear masks” to describe the masking requirements for unvaccinated middle- and high-school kids.
After a long period of this district brushing racist incidents under the rug, it’s nice to see Black history and people being made a priority. However, this event was very poorly orchestrated, which speaks volumes.
Wallingford-Swarthmore School District recently announced a few proposed changes to the 2021-22 school calendar that I think should be highlighted because of their consequences for our community.
As the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District begins the search for a new leader for our schools, members of the school district community are writing to share our expectation that our next superintendent will offer proven experience in equity and anti-racism education.
Speaking as a parent of three Strath Haven High School graduates who spent their entire K-12 academic careers in our district, I would like to say our family is one hundred percent behind Superintendent Lisa Palmer and the Board of School Directors in their efforts to keep our district safe.
As a Swarthmore resident for 15 years, the mother of two children in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, a former school board member, and a public health professional, I am writing to applaud the enormous courage of our school board members who voted to do the right thing and keep education virtual till October 2 (or longer) in an effort to protect the health and well-being of our children, teachers, and larger community.
The publishers of the Swarthmorean promote magical thinking in their recent commentary regarding the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District reopening plan. As a high school teacher with over 20 years of experience and a master of public health degree, I am working through my second major pandemic. I previously worked in healthcare with drug-using pregnant women during the AIDS epidemic.
The Wallingford-Swarthmore School District comprises extraordinary and resourceful people – teachers and residents alike. We encourage our community to have open dialogue that allows for genuine communication between parents, teachers, and the administration. Working together, we should be able to find a way to reopen our schools in a way that’s safe for both students and teachers.
Have every student attend school, in whatever way is available this year, then repeat the same grade next year. All of them.
Personally, I’m disappointed that I will not be able to send my two children to SRS to learn in person with their wonderful teachers this fall. In the end, while my partner and I will both be at work, our children will be at home receiving what we all know will be a far from adequate education. But our kids will be fine. We’ll find an expensive qualified tutor and pay them thousands of dollars to walk our children through this online education, even as I go to work to teach classes in person. Make no mistake, this letter is not about my kids, or even about most of our kids. We’ll be fine. This statement is about the families that have no options. 1) Low- to middle-income families who didn’t get lucky enough to find or pay for a tutor. 2) Single parents who have to show up to work. 3) Essential employees who can’t work from home all while keeping the rest of us safe.
I’m grateful that I live in a community in which the overwhelming majority recognizes the value of education for our children and society. As an educator, I am desperately hopeful that I will be able to teach classes face to face this coming fall, for as many of my students as are able to be there.
I am writing to express my deep appreciation for the efforts of Micah Knapp, president of the Nether Providence Board of Commissioners, and his colleagues, Matt Garson and Max Cooper, to bring meals to hungry children in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, meals that typically would be provided if the schools were open instead of being closed for COVID-19.
In my life, I’ve learned that there are infinitely special people on this planet and that not one of them is replaceable. I was inspired to pay tribute to our child’s bus driver, “Mr. Jim,” after receiving news from him in the form of a handwritten letter that he will be retiring early. Jim laments leaving the children who ride his bus; he cherishes them as if they were his own grandchildren. As I strolled along afterwards on that balmy winter evening, feeling saddened, I was struck by a sudden reflective appreciation for this significant soul in our lives.
A bit of school district trivia. In fact, the first assistant superintendent of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District was Harry W. Kingham.
As regular readers of the Swarthmorean with a strong commitment to strengthening our community, we write to share our concerns about a headline in last week’s paper for an article about the latest school board meeting. We were startled and disappointed by the use of the phrase “then things got weird” to refer to a victim’s impact statement regarding a sexual assault against a special needs girl in our district.
The headline to our cover story last week about the February 11 meeting of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board was “Board Approved Preliminary Budget, Then Things Got Weird.” Several readers interpreted “things got weird” as a reference to the effort by a community member named “Peter” to read a victim impact statement from a WSSD student who experienced sexual violence. That was not our intent.
