Mineola school Superintendent Michael Nagler publicly apologized last Thursday after assignments for third- and fourth-graders opting out of state tests caused an outcry among parents.
Jackson Avenue School students not taking the state English language arts test over three days last week were given a packet of work that struck them and their parents as punitive test prep, according to Nagler’s statement and posts in the “Mineola Opt Out” Facebook group.
That was not the intent, Nagler said at the April 7 school board meeting, calling the assignment a mistake.
“It clearly looks like we were trying to punish children by giving them work,” he said. “I don’t know what else to do other than say we’re sorry, and it’s not going to happen again.”
Many Mineola third- and fourth-graders got a 70-page packet of multiple-choice and short-answer questions last Tuesday, the first day of the state’s English exams for grades three through eight, said Stacy Leckler, the parent of a third-grader and a leader of Mineola’s movement to opt out of the tests.
Nagler said he directed Mineola schools to have assignments for opt-out students and keep them “actively engaged” because not all of them can read or work independently during the testing period.
The packet was meant to be done over the three-day testing period, he said.
But to the students and the critical parents — some of whom are also teachers — it looked almost identical to the tests they did not want to take, Leckler said.
“That was the uproar,” said Leckler, a teacher in a nearby district. “We specifically refused the assessments because we did not want them to have to be subjected to it, and the packages were above their lexiles (reading levels).”
Teachers gave different assignments to third-graders the following day, but fourth-graders got the same packet to work on, Leckler said.
In the Facebook group, many parents said they emailed principals and administrators last Tuesday and Wednesday and received responses apologizing and saying the packet was not meant to be punitive test-prep.
Some parents took their students to school late on Wednesday so they would not have to work on the packet, they wrote on Facebook.
“You drop the packet in front of the kid — what else do you expect?” Nagler said. “The reaction was perfectly understandable, and then once it’s brought to my attention, we fixed it.”
Nagler himself taught a geography lesson to the fourth-graders on Thursday to make sure they had engaging activities that were not akin to the tests, he said.
Students also got a lesson on research and writing in the school library that pleased parents and students, Leckler said.
“We’re glad that Dr. Nagler recognized his mistakes and apologized and attempted, even though it was on the last day, attempted to create that change,” parent Janice Dillon said.
Nagler said 25 percent of Mineola students opted out of the English exam, up from 18.3 percent last year.
The “opt out movement” protesting the state tests aligned with Common Core standards has grown this year, with many North Shore districts reporting increases in the number of students sitting the tests out.
Nagler said activities like last week’s packet would not be given again. With the third- through eighth-grade math exam starting Wednesday, Leckler posted in the Facebook group asking for reports of what opt-out students were doing.
Nagler also presented an amended 2016-2017 budget last Thursday with an increased equipment fund boosted by additional state funding.
As he said last week, Nagler recommended to the school board that the district put $191,569 from the state’s final “gap elimination adjustment” payment toward 1,700 new lockers at Mineola High School.
The 50-year-old lockers are among $800,000 worth of equipment purchases in the $91,124,512 budget, a 1.73-percent increase over last year.
The district is set to see a decrease of $10,000, or 0.012 percent, in its tax levy under state tax cap law.
The school board will vote on the budget at its April 21 meeting, and residents will vote on it May 17.
