Extended Learning Program and K5+

[OLIVIA HAMILTON]

Hello my name is Olivia Hamilton I am currently a 7th grader in Los Alamos Middle School, i'm here to state my opinion on this matter. It's, to put it plainly, a horrible idea from the amount of money this will cost and the amount of stress this will put on teachers, parents, and students alike.

The amount of money that this will cost is huge and is not worth it for the 10 - 25 day extension. Even if it's a small amount of days extended this still takes up students and teachers summers which they need especially after the year of online school and the amount of stress that puts on both students and teachers. Missing this part of summer for some students is detrimental because once summer starts some students as well as teachers have family that lives apart or far away. With this small space of time for students and teachers to buy plane tickets will become very expensive once it's seen many people are buying tickets. This means students and teachers won't be able to visit their family this summer and would have to do it at the start of the school year, or not at all. They'll then have to visit their family during school which is just contradicting the whole point of this program since students will be losing learning time. To be completely honest lots of students don't like school and adding the extended learning program will only make that haterade grow. Along with that many students are very stressed from the work loads of homework and adding more won't help that. As you should already know I've heard many students have dropped out already this will only add to the pile of drop outs, which is the opposite of what you want to do right? This can also lead to more serious problem like suicide, I know many students who want to commit suicide from home problems to school problems piling on top of that. I know people from my classes that go to counseling during my classes, i've seen it first hand the cuts that lay across their arms and legs. I don't want this to get even more out of hand by hearing about their deaths or them being hospitalized. It's a horrible thought that can very well become reality. For the students that don't physically hurt themselves from stress they do drugs, cigarettes, and vape. This slowly degrades their health and wellbeing. Many students do this because of school, and I want my fellow students to be healthy both mentally and physically. For the younger students, most are doing just fine, they are just having trouble with socializing and these days back at school will be more about "helping" them learn which has been tested that it helps very little for both younger and older students. These younger students' breaks will be unmatched with the older students and if they have siblings that are older they won't be able to go on family trips together due to their mismatched schedules. Is separating siblings and family your goal because doing this will definitely achieve this goal. Now for the teachers you're making them work more, being burnt out from this past year that has been really ruff and expecting them to teach well is a joke. As you already know many teachers in America are underpaid and you're promising them to get paid a "tiny" bit more which is probably not even that much anyways. Then you want them to learn a new course for this extended learning program? You act as these teachers aren't even human, why aren't you all in this together. My own band teacher had been talking to the entire band about quitting his job that I know he has a passion for and I know for a fact that other teachers were thinking the same. Doing this is going to lose you teachers and with the not so large population in Los Alamos isn't going to be good for our education. This entire program is going to backfire doing the opposite of what you're trying to do in the first place. I really hope that this gets through to you and what this can do to students, family's, teachers, and Los Alamos as a whole. I know this is very late but you didn't email all grades (please try to inform all grades by email or teachers to tell students), so please take this into your consideration.

Thank you for considering my proposal

From a student who loves this town

Olivia Hamilton 7th grade

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