Bland says community meetings were beneficial

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  • Snyder ISD Superintendent Dr. Eddie Bland (right) talked to the audience during a public meeting at Snyder Junior High School Thursday evening. The meeting was to discuss how the district will respond to pending state sanctions because of unacceptable academic progress at the junior high school the past five years.
    Snyder ISD Superintendent Dr. Eddie Bland (right) talked to the audience during a public meeting at Snyder Junior High School Thursday evening. The meeting was to discuss how the district will respond to pending state sanctions because of unacceptable academic progress at the junior high school the past five years.
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Snyder ISD officials hope that a recent round of public meetings has helped to both inform the public on the possible state sanctions the district faces, as well as enlisting community support for a plan to deal with those sanctions.
The school district is facing sanctions from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) because of unacceptable academic performance at Snyder Junior High School the past five years. Those possible sanctions include removing the school board and replacing it with a state-appointed board of managers or closing the junior high school and reopening it either as a charter school or with the majority of grade levels realigned.
While officials are unhappy with the pending sanctions, they are hopeful the state allows them to adopt the third option. To that end, they have held a series of public meetings over the past several days to enlist parents’ support for a plan that would significantly change both how students are taught and which campus they would attend.
The proposal would leave Snyder High School basically unchanged, but would impact practically every other grade level in the district: 
Pre-kindergarten students would attend classes at Stanfield Early Childhood Center, kindergarten and first grade students would remain at the Snyder Primary School campus and students in second through eighth grades would follow one of two academic “pathways” — one focusing on a more traditional classroom setting, while the other would center around more hands-on, project-based instruction known as inquiry-based learning.
The public meetings also have served to solicit parents’ support for a petition campaign to influence TEA Commissioner Mike Morath before he decides which of the sanctions to hand down. 
To date, the district has received petitions from about 140 junior high school parents, with the vast majority of those petitions favoring the dual pathway option.
“(The petitions) are the only way we’ll have any say in the matter,” Snyder ISD Superintendent Dr. Eddie Bland said. “If we get enough signatures from parents, Commissioner Morath has to take them into consideration when deciding on the sanctions.”
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Dr. Rachael McClain said parents’ questions raised during the meetings have ranged from how students will be placed in each pathway to keeping students in lower grades separate from junior high school students.
“But the one that’s been most frustrating is the concern that we’re going to segregate our students,” McClain said. “The whole idea about the pathway system is to provide a learning environment that would allow all of our students to be successful, not only through high school, but giving them options after high school.”
McClain said the public hearings would continue up to and after Morath makes his decision in December.
“As we go forward, this same process will continue,” she said. “Parents are stakeholders in the school district and we both want and need their input. There have been a lot of conversations about this in the community and, instead of hearing it from others, we feel that it would be better if they heard it from us.”
Bland also believes the public meetings have been beneficial to those who attended.
“They have been a good forum for people to express their concerns,” he said. “They’ve asked us a lot of questions and we’ve provided as many answers as we can. That’s the only way we’re going to get this information out.”