Monroe County teachers, students, parents rally against planned schools schedule change

Correction: This post was updated to correct Henry's grade level.

About 250 Bloomington students, teachers, parents and other community members gathered on the Monroe County courthouse lawn Monday to protest a plan by the Monroe County Community School Corp. to align high school schedules next year.

Holding signs that read "Listen to your teachers," "Don't take away my music" and "You will not silence us," the protesters voiced concerns about the scheduling plans themselves and the way in which, the critics said, the plans are being forced upon the local community without a good explanation and without sufficient public input.

"Many people don't feel like they've been asked," said Matt Fyfe, a math teacher at Bloomington High School North, who said he attended the rally to support students, teachers, parents and other stakeholders.

For weeks, stakeholders have criticized MCCSC Superintendent Jeff Hauswald and the school board for the planned schedule alignment. Days after teachers from at least two high schools sent letters to administrators to say the decision to change schedules had been made with little to no input from teachers, the administration released a statement Friday saying all high schools next year would operate on semesters on a “hybrid block” with 60-minute classes.

Decision made? MCCSC teachers, parents, students surprised by schedule change decision

The new schedule would apply to all four high schools: Bloomington North, Bloomington South, Academy of Science and Entrepreneurship and the Graduation School. The schools now have different schedules. South, for example, has a trimester with 60-minute classes, while the Academy has a semester and 80-minute classes.

Teachers were well represented at Monday's rally, but few wanted to speak on the record because they said they feared backlash from administrators.

Maggie Guschwan, an English teacher at South, said she does not oppose change per se and realizes the district has equity shortfalls that should be addressed.

However, she said, she opposes the "hasty and secretive manner" in which the administration is pushing the change while failing to provide data to back up its state goal of improved equity.

Guschwan said it also makes little sense to her that the administration is making decisions without seeking input from the dedicated professionals who are teaching the classes and who would be happy to suggest some powerful ideas for improvement.

Students, parents: 'Misdirection,' 'haste,' lacking consensus

Students came out in force Monday, giving speeches and rallying support from drivers who zipped past the courthouse and honked in solidarity.

Sara Kayowa Kabukala, a freshman at South, said more classes would mean more homework and less time to do it.

She said emails in which administrators tried to explain their rationale for the changes were not convincing to her. And failing to seek input from teachers was a "red flag," Kayowa Kabukala said.

Zoe Gray, a junior at South, said the changes come on the heels of difficult years during the pandemic and would benefit neither students nor teachers, including her mom.

Many students have planned their academic careers for years so that they can graduate early or complete internships, she said.

The planned changes "would blow everything out of the water," Gray said.

Lyle Henry, a freshman at North, said he came to the rally to support slowing the process because so many people are opposing the current plans.

He said he wouldn't mind shorter classes, but said it might be more difficult to grasp the information if students had the subjects only every other day.

Leo Jolliff, a junior at North, said he doesn't want seven periods in a day, in part because shorter classes could lead to more fights simply because students will have a greater number of opportunities to bump into one another during the school day.

Ally Mitsdarffer, a 10th-grader, said she believes the schedule change to shorter classes would be especially detrimental at her school, the Academy.

Students at the Academy learn primarily by completing projects, and those require classes longer than 60 minutes, she said.

Mitsdarffer said she also disliked the administration's failure to seek proper feedback.

"They just kind of said they got input, but they didn't really," she said.

Amy Jackson, parent of a North student, agreed.

The administration said it was going to solicit input, but the decision already has been made, she said. That "misdirection" from administrators has eroded the public's trust in the people who are leading the school system, Jackson said.

And Anany Maini, parent of a first-grader, said the district has not done a good job presenting data to support its rationale.

Surveys of high school students and their parents would not be sufficient public feedback, because the administration also should consult students who will be attending the schools in the next few years, he said.

Maini said Superintendent Hauswald appears to be doing whatever he wants.

Fyfe, the North teacher, said community members have told him they believe the administration's top-down decisions — on busing, moving the accelerated learning program and now the schedules — have become a pattern.

Some teachers also have said the schedule alignment aims primarily to allow for teachers to give instruction remotely to students in other schools so some teachers can be let go. Teachers have said more remote instruction would diminish the quality of education.

The administration has said people can continue to provide feedback in upcoming focus groups.

The school board is meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the MCCSC Co-Lab, 553 E. Miller Drive. Anyone who wants to speak during the public comment time must arrive early and submit a comment card to the superintendent's assistant before the meeting begins. Each speaker gets three minutes.

MCCSC critics craft petition to urge 'pause' in schedule alignment

Critics, in an online letter/petition, urged school board members to pause the schedule alignment to clearly articulate the problems and seek more input from stakeholders. The letter claims it was drafted by “parents, guardians, students and community members of MCCSC." The Herald-Times confirmed the identity of some of the authors as local stakeholders. Authors said they deliberately included co-authors that represent the corporation's priority populations, which include people of color and those receiving special education and free/reduced lunch.

The authors raised concerns about lack of transparency, misleading communication from the school corporation, disrespect for stakeholders, misuse of equity and the process having been rushed.

In addition, the authors wrote that recent decisions by the superintendent and the administration have “deeply eroded the hard-earned trust we, as a community, place in our school system.

“The environment in our schools and community is strained,” the authors wrote. “The positive culture and strong sense of identity within our highly successful high schools deserves appreciation and nurturing – not admin-dictated abrupt changes based on highly questionable premises. This toxic culture cannot continue if we hope to provide a nurturing environment for our students.”

The petition, posted on change.org, had been signed by more than 1,000 people Monday afternoon. Petitions on the website can be signed by anyone, and the HT could not independently verify the identities of the signatories, though spot checks indicated that many of the names of signatories who claimed to be parents of MCCSC students matched with names of Monroe County residents.

Signatories appeared to include former MCCSC board member Jacinda Townsend Gides, who said Hauswald “should never have been hired in the first place” and who accused the board of “rubber stamping something so many cross-sections of the MCCSC community so clearly oppose.”

Townsend Gides, now an assistant professor at Brown University, could not be reached Monday to verify that she had, indeed, signed the letter. She resigned from the board last year and, according to the Bloomington South Optimist, the student newspaper at South, focused her resignation letter on “problems with the diversity and racial equity in the MCCSC elementary and middle schools.”

MCCSC has pushed for the scheduling change primarily because of concerns over equity, a claim that teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders have said has not been adequately backed up with data. The critics also said the administration has failed to provide evidence that the new schedule would address current inequities.

Boris Ladwig can be reached at bladwig@heraldt.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington teachers, students, parents rally against school plan