Disgraced Greeley schools need immediate changes across the board

Dec 16, 2011

Disgraced Greeley schools need immediate changes across the board

by Craig Masters
It is no longer possible for second and third rate schools to hide. Greeley schools have clearly demonstrated consistent performance – in the bottom third and worse. But the news for Greeley isn’t all bad. The readily available public access to Colorado schools’ ratings in clear and easy to understand terms is really good news for district 6 schools like John Evans Middle School, which received an F grade for its ability to educate students.

If parents and the community can see where schools are doing poor quality work, they can activate to demand change. One or two schools within a community can be targeted at the school level. But Greeley district 6 is totally disgraced. Both Greeley West and Central high schools are performing in the bottom third of all Colorado high and middle schools. But their C’s are better than the middle schools in the district: all of which are rated C- or worse including the F for John Evans which is rated number 1444 out of the total of 1467 schools rated.

All the district schools performing at C, D, and F levels indicates a problem from the top down. There is no way that all of these students are defective – it has to be the schools. And it doesn’t seem believable that this many teachers at this many different schools at every grade level could be this ineffective – it has to be their leadership.

In fact, considering recent state reviews of district 6, the situation is so grave here that perhaps police should be involved to prohibit Dr. Lang from even reentering the administration building to retrieve her personal belongings without an escort. Records of board meetings indicate some board members have regularly supported the disgraced superintendent. Board president Lidiak and vice-president Richard should resign tomorrow because they have had more than enough time in office to have already called for the superintendent’s firing. There is no excuse for this situation.

The administration of district 6 has totally failed the children of Greeley. Lidiak and Richard have no excuse for having not called for Lang’s termination the day after the election. Yet it has been more than a month and they have not called for the firing of the superintendent so that rebuilding the schools for the students – not the administrators – can begin sooner rather than later.

Lidiak and Richard are not alone. Logan Richardson and Scott Rankin were also recently elected. If they didn’t know how bad the situation here was – they should not have run. If they did know and they think they can get away with supporting the disgraced superintendent’s performance – the citizens and parents of Greeley should demand these two resign as well.

This is a disgusting situation in which students’ needs have not been met by an administration clearly more concerned in creating useless busywork for staff rather than focusing on students.

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