Former BOE Member Speaks Out About WIS Reading Program

Former Board of Education member, Linda Barr, who abruptly left her seat back in late 2010 after two years of appointment, appeared at last night’s , first to apologize for the manner in which she resigned, but then to question the way reading is being taught in Branford Public Schools.

Barr is a parent of three children, two who attend private middle school and one who is a third-grader at elementary.

Lugging a large bag of books to the front of the room during last night’s meeting, Barr took the floor and read every book title her children are reading in private middle school. “Last year my daughter read: Let the Circle be Unbroken, The Outsiders, Our Town, a few Robert Frost poems, The Chosen, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist and Where the Red Fern Grows,” she stated.

“I worry about the disparity,” she said. “I worry about what we are saying to Branford kids and their capacities. I hope you will be interested in what the kids are reading in the middle school and why it isn’t closer to this.”

The Board listened as Barr explained that she had to leave the BOE because she felt like a “hypocrite.” Her feelings since leaving, she said, have stuck with her and that’s why she appeared, about a year later, to bring up her frustrations – something she said she could not do while on the BOE (Barr was ).

After the meeting, when asked if she thought her children, who attend the Hopkins School in New Haven, have a better reading program, she said the program “offers a richer opportunity.”

Branford’s CMT reading scores for seventh grade in 2010 had 88.6 of the 245 students tested at or above grade level in reading; 93.5 percent were at or above proficiency. The scores for that group in 2011, then in the eighth grade, dropped to 80.3 percent at or above grade level in reading (8.6 percent less than seventh grade) and to 89.4 percent at or above proficiency (4.1 percent less than seventh grade).

Attached is the most recent PDF of Branford’s Language Arts Curriculum, which is also available online.

Please check back for several more stories from the BOE meeting including a new partnership with the Eli Whitney Museum that will allow elementary students to have an extended day program as well as discussion about the Parent Advisory Ad-Hoc Committee becoming a permanent fixture for Branford.

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