Carpenter Community Charter Governance Council Letter to Council From: Concerned Parents and Neighborhood Shareholders Re: Recent Individual Council member actions Dear Members of Council, We are writing to the Council to express discontent over the conduct of several members within the Governance Council, specifically over the handling of current over-enrollment issues. It’s important as both parents and members of this school community to provide oversight to elected school leadership. A few individuals on the Council have used their roles in a leadership position very inappropriately to push personal agendas, which have resulted in creating a division within the Carpenter Community. An entire neighborhood has been made to feel that it must justify its validity as a member of the Carpenter Community as a direct result of actions and words by some Council members. Although we understand this was not any official stance or discussed agenda of the group, these individual actions reflect badly on the entire Council and call into question the entire group’s ability to represent the best interests of the school over personal agenda. Our purpose in writing is not to single out any individual members of the Council, rather, we are interested in focusing our energy in moving forward and working with you to restore positive perception. We would ask you to consider internally things that you can do to repair this division and restore our confidence in the leadership abilities of the group as a whole. Although a critical issue for families currently enrolled at Carpenter, our school’s handling of enrollment issues directly affects all members of the Carpenter Community living within the school’s neighborhood boundaries. Parents of children at Carpenter from the neighborhood in question have mobilized around this issue, and thanks to a quick resolution by administration, we have refocused this energy to effect positive change within our school’s enrollment policies and procedures. But it should be remembered that these issues affect more than just the families in current or planned attendance in multiple ways, and Council actions have the potential to affect the community at whole deeply. This same community that is so generous with gifts of time and money, regardless of their children’s enrollment status. We hope Council will strongly consider the recommendations forthcoming from the Enrollment Committee as well as any actions they can take to work to repair the division of our community and sense of distrust that now exists. Thank you for your serious consideration and attention to this matter.