To the editor:

I found myself feeling sorry for Bill Bullard after reading his letter to the editor in last week’s Phoenix.

First, he failed to note that he is married to Sarah Bullard, a member of the Bristol Warren School Committee, so surely he is not without bias or conflict. If Ms. Bullard thinks the Bristol Warren achievement scores don’t matter, voters should take note.

Secondly, as a retired military man, surely he has respect for authority and the importance of following the rules. In the military, the fights, non-working camera in the cafeteria, sex in the restrooms, etc that have happened at MHHS would have been dealt with swiftly and discipline would have been restored.

He suggests that research over the last 20 years indicates that low proficiency scores in schools are not useful for determining quality of education, which is totally contrary to peer-reviewed research. Perhaps he is referring to “research” done by the teachers’ unions to support their insistence on not measuring teachers whose students fail to achieve?

He goes on to discount the scourge of “black on black” crime by noting that white violent crime and homicide occur at the same rate. Wrong! FBI statistics show that blacks comprise 13% of our population, yet commit 67% of the U.S. homicides, mostly blacks killing other blacks.

Why? Most scholars agree that a primary reason is the lack of effective education — failure to teach — inner city children, who are often black. If you can’t read effectively and haven’t mastered math, crime is often the most appealing career.

It’s not just MHHS where low proficiency scores are the problem in the Bristol Warren schools, but when only 24% of graduates are proficient in math, as they go out into the world to work or try college, it’s a big problem.

Look at the scores in the Bristol elementary schools:
• Rockwell (English - 65% proficient; Math - 50%)
• Guiteras (English - 59%; Math - 42%)
• Colt Andrews (English - 56%; Math - 38%)

Note that in all three schools, teachers’ chronic absenteeism ranged from 6.2% at Rockwell, to 10.8% at Guiteras to 12.9% at Colt Andrews. At each of the elementary schools, student chronic absenteeism was over 15%.

By the time students get to Kickemuit Middle School, things get much worse:

• 19.4% of Kickemuit teachers were chronically absent as were 26.6% of all students.
• English proficiency was 48% and math proficiency was 23%.

How can we accept a school system where teachers are chronically absent? Why aren’t they fired?

Perhaps in Mr. Bullard’s world, those scores are acceptable, but I don’t think they are. Bristol taxpayers should demand more for the future of our children because we are wasting 55% of our tax dollars by not educating Bristol’s children well.

Just next door in Portsmouth, teacher absenteeism at the High School is 1.4%, 74% of students were proficient in English and 60% of students were proficient in math — still leaving room for improvement, but substantially better than Bristol Warren, while costing less per student: $16,431 per student versus the $17,453 spent in Bristol Warren.

We are spending more and getting less.

Georgina Macdonald
Ferry Road
Bristol