Katie Belobrajdic
LAPS School Board Members,
This year has been unprecedented in modern educational history and the resulting issues put before you have been emotionally charged. It is exactly times like these that make mission and vision statements a useful grounding mechanism. I’ve copied the current LAPS guiding statements below.
Mission: We enable our students to become resilient and resourceful adults who are able to achieve their personal goals in an ever-changing world.
Vision: We prepare capable and confident life-long learners.
We Value: Student Well-Being • Respect • Teamwork • Individual Growth • Empathy • Innovation • Integrity • Leadership • Transparency • Diversity • Safety
We Are Committed To: Every child will discover and develop their unique strengths and thrive at the next level. All students will attain skills, knowledge, and abilities to succeed in 21st-century society. All schools and workplaces will be safe and civil. LAPS will effectively communicate with parents, students, employees and the Los Alamos community.
Our Focus Areas: Student Well-Being • Student Learning • Teacher and Staff Excellence • Fiscal Responsibility • Quality Facilities • Innovative Leadership • Communications and Collaboration • Integrated Technology
Does this current offer of adding 10-25 days of funded additional instructional days align with the LAPS mission, vision, values, commitments and focus areas? For our family, it definitely does not. The preparation of life-long learners implies that students will develop the interest and capability to learn in the years beyond formal academic instruction. That skill set absolutely requires students to have substantial summer breaks for the mental break to maintain positive associations with learning and the opportunity to practice intrinsically motivated learning or the exploration of personal interests and goals. This is particularly critical for vulnerable students who have strengths that do not align well with the relatively narrow subset of human ability assessed by mandated standardized tests. Finally, at the LAPS "ELTP for Secondary Students" informational meeting earlier this week, both Kurt Steinhaus and Jennifer Guy stated that they do not believe LAPS has any substantial COVID-related learning deficiencies due to the quality of our staff & teachers and remote learning programs so our commitment to student learning remains complete without mandatory ELTP or K-6+.
Will there be unintended negative consequences of accepting this current offer of adding 10-25 days of funded additional instructional days? Absolutely. While other letters have mentioned the many valid deleterious effects of an extended school year, I would like to focus on the likely negative student and staff wellness outcomes that are relatively unique to our community. Recent research has shown the excessive pressure to excel and chronic social comparisons at high-achieving schools, like Los Alamos Public School campuses, exposes their students to greater risks of depression, anxiety and substance abuse. “Time Pressure” or the lack of unstructured time is specifically mentioned as a potential risk factor by Luthar et al (see full citation below). Mandating 10-25 additional instructional days, in the absence of any demonstrated learning deficiencies, reinforces the narrative that academic excellence is paramount and takes precedence over student and staff overall wellness and likely will exacerbate negative mental health outcomes in our community for years to come.
During the informational meetings earlier this week, Kurt Steinhaus stated that the impetus for the ELTP and K-6+ program was the “No Time to Lose” report which emphasizes the development of higher quality instructional time, primarily through investing in teachers, rather than the quantity of instructional time. While I understand that the LAPS school board had no role in the development of the ELTP and K-6+ programs, the LAPS school board does have the authority to choose whether to implement these programs and I encourage the school board to reject these programs.
In closing, I would like to ask the board members to reflect on one more of LAPS’s “focus areas:” innovative leadership. The global coronavirus was a cataclysmic force on the public education landscape. There has not been a better opportunity in our generation to rethink public education and develop innovative and effective strategies for our modern society and world. And never has the need been greater for new approaches as students’ needs, within classes and grades, are likely to be more diverse, reflecting their unique COVID educational experience. I strongly recommend that LAPS and the school board use next year to explore and document the effectiveness of novel strategies to achieve more differentiated and efficient instruction which could provide invaluable data to state legislators.
Respectfully,
Katie Belobrajdic
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Citations:
LAPS Zoom Meeting, ELTP for Secondary Students, May 3, 2021. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-IA8F4pzgNyAqvC0MnbY9XbSuxB8ySuw/view
Los Alamos Public Schools, 2021. About Us. https://laschools.net/about-us/
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019. Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25466
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2018. Adolescent Wellness: Current Perspectives and Future Opportunities in Research, Policy, and Practice. https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2018/06/inspiring-and-powering-the-future--a-new-view-of-adolescence.html
Luthar, S.S., Suh, B.C., Ebbert, A.M. et al. Students in High-Achieving Schools: Perils of Pressures to Be “Standouts”. ADV RES SCI 1, 135–147 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42844-020-00009-3
National Conference of State Legislations 2016. No Time to Lose: How to Build a World-Class Education System State by State. https://www.ncsl.org/documents/educ/Edu_International_FinaI_V2.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2jppQpmNFgJOaVAxWlj64fSeVxb4gl93u2lJVhZV-3eltpDBKU_1OqHXo