So, in Part 1, I asked “that question” and the Grandson’s teacher refused to directly answer my question. Part 2 showed me that in simply asking that simple question, the Administration started to monitor that email thread. However, the Principal, Danielle Bolduc, gave me a direct simple answer: ‘The simple answer to that particular question is no”.
Glad to hear that. Problem is, Policy JBAB still leaves wiggle room for the District to lie to parents (and I’ve posted those issues here on GraniteGrok). So I dunno!
Well, for the time being, I’ll accept the answer at face value. However, Reagan’s words still ring as true and as loudly as they did when he first said them: “Trust, but Verify”.
So, a two-pronged process is now in play. The first is….wait for it…..a Right To Know (what, you expected something different from me?). I’ll leave the boiler plate aside for the moment (I have more RTKs to post) but put up the “payloads”. First was one about teaching materials (first one I’ve ever done, believe it or not!):
Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records pertaining to Health/Wellness/Physiology/Sexuality instruction for the following Grade Levels:
- Kindergarten
- First Grade
The Responsive Records will include:
- Provide all curriculum, handouts (including those for which it was mandatory to give back in and NOT to be taken home), books read to children
- Provide copies and any and all “classroom” materials that can be found within the classroom (including but not limited to “quotes”, posters, flags, and the like).
- Provide which which District staff (roles/titles) are involved in this instruction area (either the normal classroom teacher, normal classroom aides, or other staff members coming in to assist or teach this kind of material).
- Provide all lesson plans pertaining to this subject matter, in the two Grade levels, for last and this year.
- Provide the District’s goals for the respective two grade levels in this regard as to what milestones are to be achieved by the end of the academic school year.
I think that covers most of what I am looking for or at least it’s a good start. Regular readers who have waded through my “xxxx- Stack of Stuff” posts where I do an aggregation of between 5 – 10 Edu-Transgender Activists snippets know what it going on. The above is part of the “Verify“. There is a lot more that I can do. In fact, I have also RTK’d the following:
Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records: for all of the District’s electronic information systems that contain directly or are linked to student information:
- Provide the database schema that shows all database tables containing student information as well as key information linking one table to another
This information can either be represented in graphical, chart, or textual formats (although graphical would be preferred).
Note that the above does NOT include any system or security level tables (see RSA 91-A:5, XI). The latter tables have nothing to do with this demand and are, indeed, unwanted.
For those of you in (or retired from) Information Technology, you know what I just did. For those of you who do not know what a “schema” is, it is a map of what information is kept within an application. In this case, any of the District’s system that have anything to do with students. Most systems today use databases that organize their information in tables: rows and column. And there are a lot of them as developers will try to separate such data logically into various tables like this for a high school:
- A list of students (which each row is a given student)
- Each student has a homeroom and the student table has a “key” that points to another table that lists classroom used for homerooms (and may have a key field that points back to each student in that homeroom).
- Each student takes “N” number of classes (another table like homerooms)
- Each student has “N” number of teachers (so forth and so on).
- Each teacher teaches “X” number of classes
- Each class has “Y” number of curriculum items
- Each curriculum item has a paper audit trail (PO Request, PO Authorization, Purchase Order, Invoices, Payments, et al)
Knowing what the schemas are allows one to start asking more and more questions.
And another RTK that I put in gave them where I will be going based on what I find:
Pursuant to the Right to Know Law (RSA. 91-A), I am demanding access, within 5 business days, to the following governmental records:
- A copy of the District’s Ethics Complaint form(s).
- A copy of the Process/Instructions/Chain of Custody for submitting, acknowledgment of, status updates, and final decision.
Oh, I also have a bunch of other RTKs that have been issued based on another meeting. Those of you whose children have IEP (Individual Education Plans – for those with a disability of one nature or another) may find them “interesting”.
