Community Update

I am a alumni of the Lakeville
school district and with the levy vote at hand I would like to try and add just
a little more knowledge so those who vote do so with as much information as
they can.

In the past few months of school I
have been doing a lot of research and interviews to find out exactly how the ever-decreasing
funds in ISD 194 are affecting those in the schools and the community. I have
found that Lakeville has the lowest overall funding in the top twenty schools
in the state. This low funding has resulted in detrimentally high class sizes
and in adequate tools for not only education but also sports.

In interviewing a large number of
teachers I found that because of high class sizes overall teaching methods have
been changed and the achievement gap seems to increase. Teachers no longer have
the time to help all their students gain a proper understanding of the
material, because it simply is not possible to help all 40 or more students per
class individually. This means that those who take longer to learn get left
behind because the teachers can not slow the whole class down to accommodate
the needs of a few students. Teachers are also eliminating long response
questions on homework and test, which cuts back on their college preparation.
College tests focus around long well developed questions because they promote
higher thinking.  

Because funds are so low there is
little to no money going into repairing and replacing unusable or out of date
equipment. Computers in the computer labs are old and out of date, and need to
be replaced along textbooks. Some of the sports facilities have fallen so out
of repair that they are barely playable anymore.

All these problems and more are
leading to more and more students leaving our school district to enroll in
others and fewer students are coming into Lakeville school districts, which
hurts the whole community. My family moved to Lakeville because of the impressive
school system and my friends’ families did the same but now people are leaving
because of the schools.

The money made if this levy passes
will help keep teachers jobs and lower class sizes. I the long run this money
will hopefully bring people back to Lakeville and make the school district the
shining star it once was.

For more info on the levy check out www.minnesotanotmississippi.com 

to check out my research check out my web site

https://sites.google.com/site/saveisd194/