What this District Needs Now

CCAP believes we now look ahead. We roll up our sleeves and we do the hard work to improve relationships in the community and in the schools. We need to improve the educational standards and experiences for our students. Henry Assetto gave an energizing speech on Tuesday in order to make motions to move forward. We were excited about his ideas and the needed changes they can bring. Please enjoy Henry's vision, and consider how you can help contribute to our schools and community. 

Last school board meeting we had the architect’s presentation for a new $30+ million elementary school. I want to bring the architect back with a presentation about naming North Brandywine a secondary 7 to 12 magnet academy school based on the principles of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. What this district needs now is a vision of 21st-century education. What the school district needs now is a dream, a new dedication, a new direction. We are at very important crossroads. We must change the perception of the school district. People, we built a beautiful state of the art elementary school: the Rainbow Elementary School. Did it stop the bleeding out of kids to Charters? No! Did Rainbow Elementary encourage anyone to say, “OH honey, we will have to buy a home in Coatesville so our child can spend five years in Rainbow Elementary?"  No!  Did Rainbow change anyone’s perception of the Coatesville School District? No!

When I began teaching in Coatesville 50 years ago, this was an innovative school district. Other school districts came here to see what Coatesville was doing. Those days can and must come back again. A STEAM academy will do that. Right now no other school district in the county has a STEAM Academy Magnet School. Yes, Downingtown has STEM but STEAM is not STEM. Downingtown STEM School has 800 students and they are expanding it to 1000 students. Now is the time if this district is serious to bring politicians together, national state and county and have them see that we are serious.

Now is the time if this district is serious to bring politicians together national, state, and county, and let them see we are serious about breaking the cycle of poverty that has damned this school district for 50 years. Politicians dealt this community a knockout punch with their social experiment of wave housing: the majority of the poor in one community. That experiment was a great success for the rest of Chester County, but a colossal disaster here. It is time to get Coatesville kids more actively involved in their own learning. They are going to have to compete for jobs with kids from the other school districts who are in the top 100 schools in Pennsylvania. Almost all of the Chester County School Districts are listed: Tredyffrin-Easttown, West Chester, Downingtown, Unionville, even Kennett, and Phoenixville are among the top 100 school districts in Pennsylvania. We say Coatesville is a diverse school district; Downingtown is now more diverse because it is actively attracting new immigrants from Asia and other new families. Even though housing prices are less here, they move there because we are not providing the kind of 21st-century education they want for their children. We must attract new young families, new residents to this district. We cannot continue blindly down the same path because we will continue to get only the same result. We cannot continue to raise taxes and spend money. That is unsustainable.

 Next year I would like to see us reconfigure the middle years again in a better way with 6th and 7th grade at Scott, 8th and 9th grade at the Intermediate building, and 10th, 11th, and 12th at CASH. We now have empty rooms at CASH and the Intermediate school, why are we overcrowding North? Let’s convert North to a STEAM academy magnet and change the perception of the school district. 

The Coatesville community has always been an industrial community. It is the hard-working people of Coatesville who produced the steel that would help win two world wars. It is the hard-working people of Coatesville who made the steel that built the skyscrapers of American cities. We must bring industry here to help us break the cycle of poverty.

 I want Lockheed Martin to come here to help build a first class aeronautics and robotics physics lab. I want Dow and DuPont Chemical to come here and outfit a first class chemistry lab. Bring in Disney or United Artist to provide music rooms, a dance studio, and a first class theater. Bring in Chevron and Amazon to encourage STEAM. I want Seed Your Future or Food for America to build a greenhouse and a bio- technical lab. Get Coatesville kids into true environmental green education, hydroponics, and conservation. Plow up the center courtyard of North, and put in a garden and get kids excited about back to nature.

Forcing teachers to put desks in groups is not true cooperative learning. Having kids excited and involved in real world problems that have reason and purpose is true 21st-century education and cooperative learning. Kids involved in their exploration a real-world problems with challenges are not discipline problems.

I want to create a consortium of university professors from all of the major universities in Southeastern Pennsylvania: the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Drexel, Temple, Villanova, West Chester, and Lincoln, and have them design a 21st-century curriculum for our magnet academy school, and perhaps, one of those universities will even consider adopting our STEAM Academy Magnet School and make it a college high school. Yesterday I met with a state legislator and the representative from York who said they started a magnet STEAM Academy and it has made a difference.

We must become competitive in this county because our children are worth it. Our community is worth it. It is the time for this community to enjoy the prosperity that the rest of Chester County, the richest county in the state, and one of the richest in the nation benefits from. It is time to expand the tax based and lower the tax rate. It is time to build in this community: The Brandywine Valley STEAM Academy Magnet School will be the beginning of making that dream come true.

With emotion Mr. Fisher I make a motion that the school district begin an intensive investigation into bringing a STEAM Magnet Academy to the Coatesville Area School District.

I am not finished. I will move this board to bring back supervisors or coordinators to the school district, full-time classroom teachers who are experts in their field of study, master teachers who are members of the National Teachers Organization. I don’t want to hear what some professor in California who wants to sell his latest book on educational psychology has to say. I want our supervisors to bring information from the National Council of Teachers of Math, the National Council of Teachers of Science, and the National Councils of English and Reading, and I know what the National Council of Teachers of Social Studies recommends: best practice in each subject area. I want the supervisors to become a cabinet to advise the superintendent, the school board, the administrators, and the public of what is best practice in each subject area. And as a member of that cabinet I want a director of development and grant writing.

Does this district really want to raise test scores? Then follow the advice of these national teacher organizations. We must stop making excuses and watering down or passing kids along. We must raise expectations not lower them. Our children must see that it is an education that will set them free. It is an education that will provide them with a better life in the future. We must become a more challenging competitive school district that encourages new residents to move here and investors to build development, increasing the number of taxpayers, lowering the tax rate, and increasing property values. Supervisors can empower our teachers with what is best practice in each subject area. So it is time to empower our teachers. 

Mr. Fisher I make a motion that this district create a cabinet of master teachers as supervisors to bring recommended best practices from the national teachers association and director of development and grant writing to the Coatesville school district. 

Thank you.

  

Henry Assetto, Region 2 School Board member