To: Nick Mosby, Shirley Nathan-Pulliam (MD-44), Antonio Hayes (MD-40), and Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD-7)
Save Westside Elementary School
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Stop the planned closing of Westside Elementary School.
Why is this important?
In response to recent events, the educators and parents of Westside Elementary School have heard "Schools, not Jails" chanted by protestors and comments from politicians like this one from Elijah Cummings, "[W]e must start working now to secure the safety of our children's futures." And yet, the City still plans to close Westside Elementary School, which is only a few blocks away from the heart of Baltimore's rioting and subsequent calls for change.
Westside Elementary School serves meals to 300 children, has a high-quality pre-K program, houses a HeadStart program, and operates a weekly food pantry. These programs are in addition to K-5 instruction in literacy, mathematics and, most importantly for any child in America, the lessons in civics and American history that are taught in the building. Westside's teachers hail from some of the best colleges and universities in America including Villanova, Princeton, Lehman College, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Towson, Wesley, the University of Virginia, and the University of Chicago.
Do not close this school because of a budget issue or because the people in the community were not politically proactive or visible in the ways that the City required. Before you take any action on the fate of the school, why not ask the community what it really thinks? Go door to door. Make phone calls. Come to the school and speak to parents daily. Conduct a study. Get a sense of the will of the people who live there. What do they want?
Even if they decide they would rather close the school than renovate or rebuild it, their voices matter. As a teacher in the school, I can see the value that a small community school can have for a neighborhood. I also believe that schools have a sacred value to neighborhoods beyond test scores and attendance numbers. But that is only one opinion. And I don't think the City really knows what the parents and citizens of the neighborhood actually want. So, let's save Westside and start a conversation that includes all the key stakeholders, including the children.
Westside Elementary School serves meals to 300 children, has a high-quality pre-K program, houses a HeadStart program, and operates a weekly food pantry. These programs are in addition to K-5 instruction in literacy, mathematics and, most importantly for any child in America, the lessons in civics and American history that are taught in the building. Westside's teachers hail from some of the best colleges and universities in America including Villanova, Princeton, Lehman College, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, Towson, Wesley, the University of Virginia, and the University of Chicago.
Do not close this school because of a budget issue or because the people in the community were not politically proactive or visible in the ways that the City required. Before you take any action on the fate of the school, why not ask the community what it really thinks? Go door to door. Make phone calls. Come to the school and speak to parents daily. Conduct a study. Get a sense of the will of the people who live there. What do they want?
Even if they decide they would rather close the school than renovate or rebuild it, their voices matter. As a teacher in the school, I can see the value that a small community school can have for a neighborhood. I also believe that schools have a sacred value to neighborhoods beyond test scores and attendance numbers. But that is only one opinion. And I don't think the City really knows what the parents and citizens of the neighborhood actually want. So, let's save Westside and start a conversation that includes all the key stakeholders, including the children.