Scott Girard:

Safety and sustainability are on the minds of West High School students.

A Madison School Board panel, organized by the school’s Sifting and Winnowing Club, featured student-generated questions that repeatedly focused on those two subjects, with a few others mixed in.

More than 400 students attended the two sessions Friday afternoon in the school’s cafeteria, with questions from moderators and the audience directed at board members Ali Muldrow, Maia Pearson and Nicki Vander Meulen.

Oluwadara Fadiran, a junior and the vice president of the club, said it’s important for students to have the opportunity to hear directly from board members.

“I feel like there’s a massive disconnect between the School Board and the school itself, because a lot of my friends want to make a lot of action, they want to make a lot of change, but they don’t know how,” Fadiran said.

Fadiran said she had hoped “to hear a bit more concrete answers” from the board members, but thanked the moderators for pushing and getting more specific plans from them.

“It was clear that they weren’t really here to give an exact plan, more so the values,” she said. “The values are great. I just want to see more action.”

Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?