Principals applaud Board of Ed

Stance on Common Core met with praise, they say

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The opposition voiced by the East Meadow School District’s Board of Education earlier this month to the Common Core State Standard’s reliance on high-stakes testing and teacher evaluations has met with praise across the district, according to three building principals.

A position paper titled “Where We Stand and Why,” signed by the district’s seven trustees and Superintendent Leon Campo, urges state education officials and legislators to re-evaluate the program, which they describe as “fundamentally flawed, inaccurate and unjust.”

Timothy Voels, the principal of W.T. Clarke High School and the president of the East Meadow Supervisory and Administrative Association, which has some 50 members, said he had not heard a single word of opposition to the trustees’ stance.

“We’re here to provide the best education possible for our children,” Voels said. “Crunching numbers and satisfying quotas is not what we do. I’m so pleased our Board of Education has come out with one unified voice to let the East Meadow community know, and to let our students and staff members know, that they’re behind us 100 percent.”

The position paper was introduced at a Board of Education work session on July 2, just two days after the retirement of Superintendent Louis DeAngelo. Campo, the district’s superintendent from 2006 until his own retirement in 2009, was brought back by the board on an interim basis effective July 1, until a permanent replacement is found.

At Board of Education meetings throughout the just-completed school year, many parents voiced complaints about what they felt was the administration’s lack of responsiveness and compassion toward parents who expressed their own opposition to the Common Core. The position paper, the principals said, reflected an immediate change in philosophy by the new leadership to reflect those parents’ concerns. “What you’re seeing now,” said Voels, “is the Board of Education being able to come out with a voice to be able to share their feelings, and to echo the feelings of the community.”

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