Op-Ed: Gaudelli's Letter to Students on Restructuring Proposals

To the Students:

I'm writing this letter to explain what action I hope the BOE will take tonight with regard to deleveling and IB. I am speaking to you to remind all of us of what's really most important tonight: You are, the students.

You will experience these changes first hand. Maybe you will meet different students in your classes. Probably you will have different activities that will be evaluated differently. And hopefully, you will be talking about issues that affect this community and the world beyond. This is an exciting change and we are confident that it will make your schools better. Rest assured that we'll be watching with hope and anticipation for how these changes play out.

The Board is taking this action because we are sworn to provide a thorough and efficient education to each one of you, all 6,600, regardless of your race, creed, class, gender, sexual orientation, or other identity. Dr. Osborne and his team developed these proposals because it is their genuine professional judgment that you will all be given a better education as a result. I fully endorse their decision. I admire their courage in making this change that is bound to be unpopular with some but is the right thing to do.

You know that having an adult have confidence in you, believing in what you can do before you believe it, is crucial to your success. Like when you learned to ride a bike or swim or so many other activities that you were sure you could never do.  Until you did. One of the moments of absolute joy for a parent or a teacher are these moments in your development, and we hope that tonight will cause more of these moments to occur for more of you. Tonight the Board will say that we have confidence in you, we know you can do it and we will support you in doing it. All of you, not only those of you who learn to swim quickly, or those that need extra help, but even those who are afraid of the water.  What this proposal tonight says is, jump in, the water is fine and we will be there to keep you safe and to help you learn to be the best person that you can be.

We will do this because that's what adults are supposed to do in any community; to support the growth of all of you. To affirm that everyone can learn, to believe that all people matter in a democracy and that any community, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link.  You are all our children and what happens to each of you and you as a group is why we all spend the many hours we do making plans.  No, we wont always get it right and it will take your hardwork and thoughtful feedback to help us get better.  But know that your successes, those achieved and those just imagined or wished for, will make us proud. 

You have probably heard your parents say why they chose to come to our towns.  If your family is like mine, you chose to live here because of the community's commitment to living the grand American creed in this little parcel of land: that all are created equally and endowed with inalienable rights, those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They moved here because Martin Luther King's dream was not simply a great speech but a call to being a better society, to living with justice, comity and opportunity for all. They came here because they wanted to raise you in a community that shared these values, that recognized that despite America's promise, we are not yet.

We live in a society that has horrendous poverty adjacent to incredible wealth with schools that too often reflect their local economies. You live in towns, that while not quite so extreme, mirrors this dynamic divide. Some might say his makes public education in a place like this impossible, that the chasm is too wide between haves and have nots, between families who benefitted from all that education can offer from those who failed to fully reap its rewards, children who were left behind, now adults, offered only a vague promise to wait for a superhero. Well,  the Superintendent is not wearing a red cape and I am suspicious of heroic stories. But we are affirming a pledge to you, that no longer will good enough be acceptable, that the achievement and growth of each of you matters, and that we will not be satisfied with anything short of equal opportunity for all 6,600 of you.

We affirm tonight that you, like our country, are not yet. 

And it is this wonderful plasticity that gives us hope, the possibility of who you are becoming, rather than who we have decided you are. And tonight I am joyful in the opportunity to support this effort, knowing that what greatness a people can achieve is always done working together, believing in one another to shape our common lot.