It's as simple as getting a degree in calculus - for someone who's never grasped long division.
But here's the Coles Notes version: Parents notice that one teacher is failing a lot of students. Parents realize this could impact their kids' futures. Parents take concerns to school district. District follows process designed to a)
protect teachers b) force parents to follow a snakes-and-ladders complaint process and c) mollify parents - if possible. The district reviews math marks and adjusts them. Parents are not mollified and want to appeal on numerous levels. District denies appeals, saying the appeals don't fall under the School Act or school board policy. But board refuses to precisely say where the appeals fall short.
This, they hope (in our opinion), will stymie parents while the district sets up a committee to review the whole appeals issue.
All of this, again, in our opinion, is intended not to assist parents - these ones or future ones - who want to complain about teachers.
And, who can really blame the board and district? Can you imagine how many appeals and disputes they might have to deal with if they actually waded into the whole complaint process?
Can one imagine how many grievances teachers would file when faced with the possibility of being dragged into an appeal process to face parents? (Moms, dare we say, often make mother bears look like neglectful parents.)
We think there would soon be a battle at the Labour Relations Board that would try to stop all that public flogging.
The way it used to work is that principals dealt with complaints about teachers, and if that didn't resolve the problem, it was pushed over to staff in the district office where complaints died of old age. Or, perhaps, a senior staffer phoned the principal and told him or her to fix the problem before it got legs.
If the complaint was really nasty (about touching and not marks) it was shipped off to the B.C. College of Teachers.
In any case, this math problem appears to just keep multiplying.
