Fosters Opinion: OR District voters may have been misled

F.O.R.E. member and Oyster River resident, Laura DiMeglio, takes political disagreement to a personal level in a recent opinion piece published in Fosters on June 29th:

[UPDATE: Ms. DiMeglio requested her letter be removed - you can still read it at Fosters]

OR District voters may have been misled

For the third time in three months, I am writing to express my extreme dissatisfaction with the Oyster River School Board. I feel that their decision to terminate the contract of our Superintendent Howard Colter, a man with an extraordinarily high approval rating among his faculty and staff, is a clear abuse of power and part of a greater plan to change our district's educational philosophy. I'd like to tell the community how I came to my position.

My experience is with recently elected school board member, Megan Turnbull. While I realize she is just one of a board of seven, I feel her opinions have been influential. I'd like to stress that I do not wish to be hurtful. I believe, however, that Ms. Turnbull was not forthcoming with her opinions during her recent school board campaign and that our district is now facing the consequences of a dishonest election.

I've known Ms. Turnbull for just over a year and during that time she has shared with me many of her opinions about education and the ORCSD. While I commend Ms. Turnbull's passion and feel she truly believes she is acting for the good of the district, I strongly believe that her following opinions should have been made public during her campaign.

— Ms. Turnbull supported promoting someone from within our district to the position of high school principal with the goal of reducing an assistant principal position (personal communication, February 2011).

— Ms. Turnbull supported a Superintendent buyout since Mr. Colter announced he would not seek renewal in November of 2010 (several personal communications, December 2010- February 2011).

— Ms. Turnbull opposes our district's philosophy of engaging every learner through differentiated instruction and heterogeneous grouping and supports tracking. She is quoted below from letters to the Oyster River Community Resource in 2008 and has expressed these same opinions to me as recently as February, 2011.

n Nov. 18, 2008: "... I fail to see how heterogeneous classes effectively engage all learners, especially in the higher level grades. I believe that a tiered system is more effective at targeting the needs and abilities of individual students."

n Sept. 6, 2008: "Tiered Classes — ... I do not support the ORCSD's heterogeneous class structure and believe it places children at a huge disadvantage when applying to college."

— Ms. Turnbull supports a change in district philosophy and the hiring of a new Superintendent that supports this change (personal communication, February 2011).

— Ms. Turnbull supported eliminating one of the curriculum director positions. Below she is quoted from a letter to the Community Resource.

n January 7, 2010: "Eliminate the two Directors of Instruction positions — Re-instate the two directors in their previous roles, and, then, eliminate any staff redundancies. These overhead roles are truly District luxuries in tough economic times."

It is possible that Ms. Turnbull has changed her mind on these issues. During my conversations with Ms. Turnbull, I also started to share some of her concerns. However, I learned more from my husband, from our Superintendent, and from my friends who are educators. The more I learned, the more I realized the merits of Oyster River and the philosophy that promotes and encourages a love of learning in our children. I learned that our experienced teachers are committed to engaging every learner. I came to the conclusion that as a parent, I value engagement over assessment. Perhaps Ms. Turnbull has also had a change of heart.

However, given that this board is responsible for the loss of three top administrators, all who value our current philosophy, and that at least two of the recent controversial actions we've seen from the board were supported by Ms. Turnbull before the election but not disclosed, I am very concerned that the next casualty will be our district's educational philosophy. I would like to hear our current board members publicly state that they support the Oyster River vision and philosophy statement that was drafted by the strategic planning committee and that they will hire a new Superintendent that supports it as well. If there is to be a discussion of change, it should happen in public. This discussion can be passionate, it can be heartfelt, it can be heated, but it needs to be in public.

I have learned a lot about Howard Colter in the past four months and am truly saddened that he will no longer be guiding our district toward excellence. If you are hearing people criticize him or our district's philosophy, please find out for yourself. Speak to teachers, speak to your neighbors, speak to Mr. Colter. Find out why our district is great. Find out what is at risk. The current school board has done Mr. Colter a great disservice. As a community, we have exchanged visionary educational leadership for an arrogant and inexperienced school board. Please help remedy this situation by demanding the transparency we were promised and by casting your vote next March.

Laura DiMeglio
Lee