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Step OneOur first step would be to educate the policy makers and parents of the underlying issue. To do so, we attended a board meeting to propose our policy in front of the board of education in Basking Ridge. The board responded with a great deal of concern to our issue and are taking our proposals into heavy consideration for next year. Another way to reach our community would be through student testimonials at board of education meetings, this would additionally help parents, teachers, and board members understand the gravity of the problem. The website we created will also serve as an important resource for the public and student body to learn more about the issue and our proposal. In the fall of next year, our group will be meeting with our superintendent, Nick Markarian to access and evaluate the problem. Lastly, to bounce ideas and further identify where the problems falls we will hold committee meetings consisting of teachers, parents, students, and guidance counselors.
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Step Two
After clearly identifying the issue, the second step would be to overcome opposition. The people who would be most against these policy changes would be school staff members who don’t want to see a change in their salaries or the school’s budget. In order to fund our proposed policies we wish to take a very small percentage of extracurricular activity leaders or coaches’s salaries. For example, the head football coach at Ridge High School makes $12,000 for the season and decreasing it by 5% we could take that extra money and use it to fund our proposed programs. The money would go towards hiring more staff to lower the student teacher ratio and fund the seminars to further educate the guidance department. Although these people may not be happy with this, we may be able to overcome their opposition because we will not be cutting any programs completely. Also another way to overcome opposition would help them understand that their decrease in pay is funding a positive program that in the end will benefit their students.
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Step Three
To gain support, we will reach out to the PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) to make the changes regarding our policy. With their support it will be easier for our group to make the changes necessary in order to lower the amount of student stress in school. The PTO can help influence and sway the opposers and staff members in favor of our policy changes. The parents could also serve as a vital support system for our policy and could influence policy makers as well as teachers and staff. |
Step Four
Once we have the support from the our community and policy makers, our first step would be to implement a series of seminars for guidance counselors and teachers on the depth of the issue and how to help students succeed in and outside of school. During the seminars we can also inform all guidance of detailed class descriptions so they know what students will be getting themselves into when they sign up for classes. Secondly, our plan would call for strict disciplines for testing days. Considering all schools offer different levels and varieties of courses, the schedule will not be one size fits all. Testing can also include assessments, for example, debates and presentations. If students have too many assessments on one day they can fill out a waiver that will allow them to take a specific assessment on a different day. However, this waiver will have a window of 2 days, and if the students does not complete the assessment in 2 days they will receive a zero. The most difficult and expensive step would be to reduce class size. As mentioned before, in order to do this we wish to decrease salaries by 5% for extra curricular leaders and coaches. This extra money can be used to hire new teachers and in some cases new space for teaching. This process will take a long time to go into effect but will benefit schools and students in the long run.
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