Madison County Public Schools are falling behind surrounding counties at the high school and middle school levels. Our Black students and economically disadvantaged students are falling behind their counterparts. These students are not less intelligent than their peers, indicated by the fact that these gaps are much smaller at our primary and elementary school levels.
Why are our kids falling behind? What can our community do to help? These are important questions, and I hoped our school board would have had time in its agenda at the last meeting for discussion of these recently revealed gaps in our testing pass rates. However, rather than say anything about bringing up pass rates, they discussed putting guns in the hands of teachers and banning books. The irony of banning books when our literacy pass rates are abysmal would be funnier if we weren't discussing actual children who will have to go out and function in the world.
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Our school board needs to wake up and put in the actual work. If they spent the same amount of time and energy working toward solutions rather than divisive political grandstanding we might be able to actually make progress.
As a community, we all want to be proud of Madison county graduates. We need to find out where we are failing them, and try to fix it. We need to work together on initiatives of substance. I urge you to attend our school board meetings and hold our board members accountable. I encourage you to go to the schools and see if there are ways you can help. We as a community need to pick up where the school board is leaving off and carry the load they appear to be too ego driven to carry.
Devlyn D'Alfonzo, Radiant
