Date: 10/14/2021
In the Sept. 9 issue of The Reminder, I was quoted as having said that the Hampden Wilbraham schools continue to “spend all this time on stupid social issues.” Although I regret my choice of words (“stupid”), the point I was making is that the Hampden Wilbraham school district student test scores continue to go down even as the focus on social and political issues continues unabated. While our school district was once rated as number one or two in Western Massachusetts, it is now ranked somewhere in the 20’s.
Also, all of the social issues brought up at the meeting by attendees were issues that could be and were addressed within our school district by teachers, principals and the school administration. I do not feel there is a need to hire an outside company for $80,000 to tell us what we need to do to improve our school system. A company that is not familiar with our towns and a company that has no vested interest in the good people and children in Hampden and Wilbraham. Unfortunately, one has to assume that there is something wrong with our district to buy into the equity audit. That alone is problematic.
I urge all citizens of Wilbraham and Hampden to closely monitor and participate in all matters related to our schools and our children and resist all outside influences that operate on this premise that we need to be fixed. Our goal should be to continue to make sure our teachers do what they can to help our children have confidence in themselves. Let’s let our focus once again be academics; let our science teachers teach science, our math teachers teach math and our English teachers teach English. That is the way to improve student scores and educate our children.
Patricia Harrington
Hampden
