Community Corner
Parent: Plan Doesn't Make Town Better
A Winchester parent says while the committees surrounding the redistricting plan want to make the town better, the proposed plan doesn't achieve this goal.
I live in Spruce-Lincoln community. Both of my kids are in though only my younger one will be forced to transfer to , according to the RAC plan.
I read RAC's report and do not think this proposed report will achieve the goals that they set up.
First of all, the goal of redistricting, according to RAC, is to establish close to similar size of schools for kids of different schools. There is no valid model to project student size in the schools for the future. Moving/renting/relocating due to economic and house market reasons makes the mode within a confidence level impossible. Even for the whole school, different grades will possibly to have different number of kids. To achieve an average class size or teacher-student ratio can not be solved by this redistricting plan.
Secondly, the concept of community for family is "school community", far more than "neighborhood community". Our kids spend a quality 8 hours every day at school; they are with their friends at school. For example, my 4th grade son has a kindergartener as his "buddy". My 1st grade son has a 3rd grader as his "buddy", both of them are not on our street. Imagine one young kids move to a class to 20, knowing nobody in his new class, knowing maybe at most 27 kids in the whole school assuming there is no one who will move out of our neighborhood in the next year, which itself is hard to predict, too.
Find out what's happening in Winchesterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Last but not the least, the members of RAC and the school commitee are overlapped. The plan proposed on May 22 will not be voted on by a complete independent committee. I am wondering: how many members in RAC or the school committee live in our neighbourhood? How many of them have actually investigated the real walking distance from our homes to our current school and the difference to Lynch. I am also wondering how many of them have a successful experience of transfering their school aged kids from a school of 10 (Lincoln) to a school of 8 (Lynch)?
Each of one wants our town to get better. This proposed plan does not achieve this.
-Jian Guan of Winchester
Find out what's happening in Winchesterwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.
