PACE as you know it is changing - attend the next PACE PASS meeting 11/29
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Those who are not members of the CCE PACE PASS message board may not be aware of the most recent issue associated with gifted education in St. Johns County.
The principals of the elementary schools have apparently made the decision that PACE will no longer be supported as a cluster program, and will instead move back to each neighborhood school. What is not clear at this point is why this decision has been made (desire to retain high-achieving students for FCAT/NCLB statistics?), and if the decision is final and binding. There are a number of issues associated with this decision:
- Transportation will no longer be provided to students to continue to attend classes at their current out-of-area school.
- Given that some grades have difficulty defining enough students to warrant full-time classes, what happens when students move back to their home schools and class sizes go below minimum requirements?
- If this decision is final, why was the GAC not involved? There was no mention of this possibility in the minutes to the GAC meeting just last month.
- If the decision is final, why wasn’t the school board involved? Beverly Slough had no knowledge of this matter until approached by parents.
While the idea of providing gifted services in every school is admirable, the reality is that there needs to be a critical mass of students identified as gifted in each grade in order to warrant a full time class in each grade. The elimination of clustering gifted services will make it much more difficult to achieve these minimum class size requirements and force gifted students back to classrooms that move at a slower pace.
Parents of PACE children can attend the next PACE PASS meeting on November 29 (Thursday) at 6:30 p.m. in the PACE portable at Cunningham Creek Elementary. Hopefully, administrators will attend to explain the impact of this decision and how it affects their commitment to full time gifted education.
We urge everyone to attend.
Tags: changes, cunningham creek elementary, gifted, pace, parent communications, parent concerns, st. johns school district
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November 30th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
[…] held at Cunningham Creek Elementary, previously scheduled by the CCE PACE PASS group, to address rumors and concerns about upcoming changes to PACE in St. Johns County School District. Administrators from CCE and Ms. Martha Mickler, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and […]