gee, what a surprise

The only thing I could vote on or for yesterday was my town's school board.  So I went first thing (I care a bit about the schools in my town) and then went to work.  The local paper said that it would post the results first thing today, so I checked this morning and was pleased to see that the three candidates I voted for made it in. 

The next article down, under the title "Mask Parade Taps Student Creativity," was a brief piece about Hippie School's annual Mask Parade, always held the day before Halloween:

"Bright colors and student ingenuity paired up with a touch of technology resulted in a [Hippie] School tradition being carried out for yet another year. Featuring representations of what students are learning in the classroom, the [Hippie School] Mask Parade featured a bevy of themes ranging from oceans and volcanoes to animals from past and present in the east grass area of the campus."

Interesting.  You know, Neighborhood School also had a Parade of Masks at 10:00 Friday morning, and I can say that the masks were great and creative and fun: the first graders made deciduous tree masks, because they're studying forest biomes this year; and second graders -- who study arctic and antarctic biomes -- were either arctic wolves or vikings, depending on which class they were in.  In some of the older grades, each kid had chosen an animal or plant from the grade's biome, and walked around holding a sign for everyone to recognize.  Sixth graders had made Aztec mosaic masks, because they've been studying the Aztecs this fall as part of the social studies curriculum.  Oh, and third graders, masked as bison from North American grasslands, treated us to a brief stampede rather than the relatively orderly parade the other classes gave.  Each class walked around the grassy area at the center of the school to the tune of music they'd chosen.  It was great.  When the kindergartners walked around -- each as a different letter of the alphabet -- the entire school sang an alphabet song with them, because they'd almost all learned it with Ms. Froggie.

The comparative invisibility of Neighborhood School bothers me deeply.  It's a good school, but also a struggling one.  Test scores are not good, and given the fucking insanity  standards of NCLB, I worry that soon it will have less curricular freedom than it currently does as a result.  But it's also been abandoned by the town in certain ways.  I know ONE other faculty member whose child has gone there, and her daughter graduated from high school a year ago.  Even when housing prices were crazy high and young faculty "had" to live south of the tracks, in our neighborhood, they found ways to send their kids to Hippie School or HTSW or E.  I overheard another friend -- who lives out of the district -- talking at a party about how to game the system to make sure that his kids got to go to Hippie School regardless.

It's just this: Why wasn't the article about the Mask Parades at both schools?  Both are longstanding traditions that go back decades; both show kids' ingenuity and creativity; both show how the schools are integrating learning in a variety of ways.  So why only highlight one?

Comments

[Grace]

Did you send a press release to the papers?

Our NS was featured in the local paper. http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2009/10/diversity-10.html

It turns out, the photographer is married to one of the teachers at the school. I believe that made it easier for him to identify and get photographic releases for the kids. The pix are posted on the web.
http://dailybreeze.mycapture.com/mycapture/folder.asp?event=870343&CategoryID=29720&ListSubAlbums=0

This is not an affluent school. 20% of the kids get free or subsidized lunches. They go home and speak 30 different languages (family self-reported). It was recently a Title I school. Yet, it is now in the top 10% of CA schools in API scores.

It sounds like your NS has a chicken and egg problem. Educated parents do live in the school attendance boundary, but flee the school b/c they have not heard positive things about it. I agree that you need better PR. You can turn the perception of your NS around.

[dr]

I think that they did one, back in the spring when the school board voted it in. But I do think that Neighborhood needs better PR, generally ...

[JBE]

Hmmm....maybe Neighborhood School needs a PR manager. We could ask the local rag to do a piece about the new magnet program?

[Shhh]

Yup - a proper letter/thought-provoking piece to the paper that should be published. No doubt a number of parents would appreciate it!

[dr]

I wanted to just post a comment, but theres no place to do it. Well see if my aggravation gets me all the way to writing a proper letter ...

[meg]

You should write to the Local Mullet-Wrapper!