I am a former English teacher at the university level. I currently have two children who are open enrollment students at Orchard Elementary School in Vacaville. I go to the school twice weekly as a parent volunteer in both classes. I proctor STAR reading tests and help out with the Accelerated Reader program. I also hang out with the kids during recess and other activities.I have two major points to make about school closures:
• If the school board elects to close a school, it seems a foregone conclusion that class sizes in kindergarten through third-grade will go 30-to-1. This is the worst possible scenario for a child's education. Time and time again, I have seen a child's reading ability calcify by second-grade.
If you put a child in a kindergarten of 30 students, a first-grade of 30 students, a second-grade of 30 students, etc., and you will be passing on kids from grade level to grade level with fair to substandard reading skills. And reading skills have been shown to be one of the biggest indicators of a child's educational success in all subjects.
In addition, if you close a school, you will be effectively saying: schools in Vacaville are going to stay at 30-to-1 permanently, and it is the students who will suffer.
We can't just go back and "reopen" that school.
• How does the Vacaville school district expect to draw students if it closes a school and goes 30-to-1? My neighbor home-schools her four children, and when she heard that the
district was considering closing a school and going 30-to-1, she made the comment that if she ever considered Vacaville public schools, she and her husband surely wouldn't now. These are the