Legislation gone bad...

Esteemed Members of the Arizona House and Senate,

As a concerned Arizonan, I'm writing to ask for your help, and because I respect your service to your communities' educational agencies.

I have worked in Arizona district and charter schools for a combined 18 years here in Arizona.  Most of those were shared with underprivileged, homeless, at-risk, and more recently refugee children.

I have lobbied some of you, worked campaigns as a LD10 (now LD20) Precinct Committeman, lobbied members of the House and Senate at the Federal level, and most importantly I am a father of five incredible children.

Presently, I'm a school principal in East Phoenix, where we've labored diligently, turning a major corner taking our school from corrective action to a B in one single year.  We also have some of the highest re-classification rates among Latino, Refugee and Homeless children (50-60%).  We are building a national model for serving this population of children.

I'm encouraged by the momentum...and yet troubled by the increasing challenges we face in meeting the legislative mandates.

Those that vex me most are:

• Mandating 4 hour blocks of reading, writing, vocabulary and speaking courses.
• Implementing strategies determined to meet a government standard.

In order to meet these mandates, I've had to;

• cut my mathematics instruction by 180 minutes per week campus-wide, 
• shorten enrichment and intervention activities for non-ELD students, 
• limit ELD student access to differentiated mathematics, science and technology instruction,
• and require teachers to spend 10-12 hours on the weekends creating lesson plans that meet government templates/standards - outside the normally accepted - and already proven best practices.

There may be a few educators who understand the need to set and meet high expectations for our students better than I.  I fully accept that I may not grasp all the ins and outs of this process, but as a successful practitioner, I can demonstrate that I know precisely what it can entail.

Resources are already limited.  District leadership, while facing federal cuts, is trying to support these mandates via private grants or application of already diminished Title III funds.  In other words, they are doing their level best to make this work.

The single most troubling factor is that while we may eventually meet the government standard, in so doing, we grossly neglect Science, Mathematics, and Technology learning opportunities.  

These are the skills that we all know must have the highest degree of focus in the coming days, months, and years if we are to ever prepare our children for sustainable jobs in the growing job fields. To make them college and career ready.

I'm asking that you;

• Create legislation that limits the mandated instructional blocks to 2 hours maximum, allowing successful site/district flexibility to meet the individual needs of children.
• Limit governmental ability to impinge on LEA (Local Education Agency) scheduling and application of State and Federal resources without first assessing the efficacy of existing programming.
• Limit governmental corrective action oversite when districts/LEA's post consistently high rates of re-classification (40%).
• Formulate an LEA/District/Charter appeals process for corrective action/monitoring that allows LEA's to submit to a third party for review.
• Re-direct funding to groups that can highlight best practices and share them with struggling LEA/Charters/Districts in a collaborative venue.

In short, put children first.

Best,

Principal Sharp