Schools

Letter: 'Teacher of the Year' Supports Charter Cluster

To the Members of the DeKalb County School Board:

This is not a form letter.  This is not a robotic message designed to garner your vote for the Druid Hills Charter Cluster based on its mere existence.  This is a candid, sincere, passionate plea from Aly Montooth, the 2013 DCSS System-Wide Teacher of the Year, an English Teacher at Druid Hills High School, a seventeen-year veteran of DCSS, and a parent of a kindergartener at Laurel Ridge Elementary School.  

These diverse roles allow me a particularly rich understanding of the potential of the Charter Cluster, and I implore you to vote in favor of the petition this Monday.  We, the stakeholders of the Cluster, are confident that the Charter will be an instrument of change:  we can better instruct our students, better support our teachers and staff, and better satisfy our parents if we are allowed to make our own educated decisions and craft our own innovative solutions.  If you are honestly committed to repairing the years of damage that caused DCSS to nearly collapse in a loss of accreditation last year, you will allow us to attempt to fix the financial, instructional, and organizational inefficiencies in at least this area of the county by voting “yes” to the petition on Monday.  If we are successful in the next few years, we are open to sharing our strategies with other regions of DeKalb County so that we can all not just survive, but thrive.  Please read this letter in its entirety and consider carefully the points therein, because I believe that I speak for the vast majority of this area’s stakeholders.

Find out what's happening in Virginia Highland-Druid Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

To begin, the Charter Cluster will allow each teacher to have a voice in how to best educate students.  My colleagues and I have experienced intense frustration at the abundant, often meaningless, often pedagogically unsound tests thrown at our students over which we have little control.  The material on the Benchmarks and SLOs, for example, is often educationally foul (examples:  questions written with no correct answer available; material infringing copyright law) and devours unreasonable amounts of class time and teacher planning time.  Teacher input on these assessments has been in name only; when we offered suggestions for the SLOs last year, our concerns went unheeded under the pretense that teachers had written these assessments, so we must live with them “as is”—we were apparently not allowed to fix them.  With the Charter Cluster, teachers can take charge of these assessments, tailoring them to class content aligned with the Common Core and ensuring that these instruments do not interrupt the flow of instruction by swallowing entire class periods.  The Charter can allow teachers to make all assessments worthwhile and appropriate.  We are so busy assessing our students that we are failing to teach them. 

The Charter will also allow us to lower class sizes and adjust course offerings to meet the demands of our twenty-first century learners.  Thirty-six students in an AP class create an unreasonable burden of grading on the instructor, who grades thousands of pages of essays a semester.  Thirty-six students in a co-taught special education class place an unreasonable burden on the two teachers who struggle to reach those needing extra help.  We cannot take our students outside to do creative writing—the class is too large and difficult to manage.  We cannot allow students to give fifteen-minute presentations for their Senior Projects because that would take out too many days when the class is so large.  We cannot sign up for a computer lab of 32 computers because our class has 36.  Class size cripples instruction in nearly every conceivable way.  Additionally, my students clamor for classes that suit their interests:  an English class for kids who are entering the work force and want more practical writing and reading instruction as opposed to classic literature; an elective featuring Shakespeare’s comedies for the more scholarly sort; more study halls for struggling students, an advanced Anatomy class for students interested in the medical field—all of these inspired and inspiring classes are potentially available with the Charter model, because we can tailor class offerings to what students need and want.  The possibilities are endless.

Find out what's happening in Virginia Highland-Druid Hillswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

What’s more, the Charter can improve the currently abysmal teacher and staff morale, which stems from years of feeling as though our suggestions and concerns are not valued. Of course, teaching is intrinsically challenging and draining for those who choose it; the vocation demands passion, caring, patience, and diligence, even in the face of formidable impediments.  We embrace these difficulties head-on, working long hours and receiving little recognition, financially or otherwise.  We survive on the successes that we are able to create in the classroom; we survive on feeding the minds of the next generation and watching them grow.  However, things are not the same as they used to be.  Now, in the seventeenth year of my career, I feel a real crisis. We as educators can no longer financially afford to teach in this county.  Consider just some of the fifteen teachers (approximately 20% of our staff) that Druid Hills High School lost last year only because they could not financially afford to continue:  a gifted Physics teacher with a PhD in the field; an Economics teacher  who was recently the Economics Teacher of the Year for the entire state;  a brilliant art teacher who brought a sculpture program to our art department years ago; a Spanish teacher who taught IB and sponsored our Drama Club so well that our productions included professional costumes and sound;  a Druid Hills High School alumna with a master’s in history and a specialization in Atlanta history who taught U. S. History, brought students to the State Capitol annually to witness legislation occurring, sponsored Yearbook, and sponsored Model U.N.  Since you, the board members of our county, have only recently filled your positions, you may not be keenly aware of the crisis currently facing teachers financially, but in recent years, I have watched gifted, quality teachers enter the school year with enthusiasm and hope, only to depart this county downtrodden and financially strained.  The Charter Cluster can immediately fix this problem and keep capable, irreplaceable professionals at Druid Hills and elsewhere.  If this petition fails, you will sadly see another mass departure of superb educators from this school and others, because for most of us, the Charter represents our greatest sense of hope.

At this point, I must address an issue with frankness.  Those who see this petition as an attempt to further the interests of a Caucasian, elite group are grossly misled; they have clearly not read the petition in its entirety, and it is a shame that this petition’s detractors can so flippantly publicize misinformation.  Our attendance zones will be the same.  We will continue to serve a population of approximately 70% of African-American students, a significant number of English Language Learners, and nearly 50% of students on Free and Reduced Lunch.  This charter is for all students, teachers, and parents.  We will not only maintain but improve services for Special Education and English Language Learners, and what’s more, we will align our curriculum from kindergarten to twelfth grade by communicating with each other more openly, so that our students’ progression feels academically seamless and rich with continuity.  We anticipate establishing a special program for Science and Technology, the STEAM program.  We already serve our high-achievers well through AP and IB coursework; our intent is to teach and reach everyone more effectively.  This is an inclusive public charter, not an exclusive private charter.  If the seats are available, we will even invite those outside of the Charter Cluster attendance district to join us as we remediate the wreckage that our current system has become.  I myself am not a member of an elite, Caucasian group.  I am a working class teacher living paycheck to paycheck, worrying daily that my retirement might not be enough for me to live on since it is currently entangled in legal issues, another failure of the system.  I teach public school because I want to give students the gift of literacy, and I accept less pay daily because of it—I could teach at a private school right now and earn more money, more respect, and less stress, but I am at Druid Hills because my students need me more here.  I am a product of a diverse public school, and I am personally committed to seeing public schools thrive.  Public schools are not thriving in this county right now. 

The Charter can affect so much more than what I have already discussed. Organizationally, we have the potential to improve bus efficiency, pay for custodians, benefits for teachers and staff, the number of support personnel such as paraprofessionals and special education teachers—the list goes on.  You, the members of the DCSS board, have the ability to effect positive change in this county by voting “yes” to the state-sponsored Charter.  We love our county and we love our schools, so please allow us to save them. Do not deny us the chance to make education efficient and meaningful for our students.  Do not deny teachers the chance to be financially stable and inspired.  Do not deny us our voices. 

 

Most sincerely,

 

Aly Montooth, English Teacher, Druid Hills High School

Parent of Chloe Montooth, Laurel Ridge Elementary Kindergartener

DCSS 2013 Teacher of the Year

 


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Virginia Highland-Druid Hills