On the simple equation of academic outcomes

The priority of the school board, as stated to us by Pat Higgins, is first and foremost the academic outcome of students as they pursue their education. As parents, I think we have all found - to varying degrees - that earlier start times have posed an obstacle in and of themselves when it comes to preparing our children each morning to attend school, and arrive on-time in the best possible frame of mind to engage in the daily activities of their classrooms. The school board’s proposed changes would, regardless of whether the children were to attend Lake Otis or Denali Montessori, exacerbate these new challenges. Whether riding the bus to Lake Otis or being transported by parents to Denali, the bottom line is that students will have to awaken even earlier and under a more demanding timeline in order to arrive at school on-time. This necessarily means that morning are bound to become a higher-stress start to each school day, which will necessarily deteriorate the mental and emotional state of our students as they arrive at school. This can only be compounded by the fact that adding students to both of these programs - even if they were to be divided as prescribed by the district - will result in these schools being over capacity. I believe it’s also safe to say that it’s unlikely all of the Montessori students at Tudor will be able to attend Denali due to the added logistical wrinkle posed by having to transport them all the way downtown. All told, this means that regardless of where students were to wind up in the even of a Tudor closure, they will arrive in a less ideal state to engage in their academic pursuits, and both schools will have less capability to provide for their educational needs. The calculus of this is that closing Tudor will unquestionably result in poorer outcomes for students, academically as well as socially and emotionally. For this reason, the closure of Tudor is, simply put, not an acceptable outcome and should not be accepted by the school board.