We would like to ask the BOE committee to schedule an additional public hearing with full public participation to broader discuss the issues arising with proposed redistricting of New Britain schools. Many parents were not fully informed, or totally unaware of the proposed changes to totally eliminate STEM and Scholastic programs and to transfer all students back to their neighborhood schools.

We would like to offer our alternative solution to Mr. Cooper’s proposal.

Instead of drastically eliminating STEM and Scholastic programs and forcing students to transfer back to their neighborhood schools, we would like to propose to start this process with Kindergarten class in the school year 2013-2014 and slowly converting our schools to neighborhood schools over the 5 year period, instead of few months over the summer (applying the same approach to our middle schools).  This will eliminate chaos, heartaches, drop in educational achievements, and emotional distress that those drastic changes will bear on our students.  During the 5-year transition process New Britain district would have a chance to implement equal educational environment with smaller class sizes, after school programs, and STEM scholastic programs in every school, as promised by Mr. Cooper, so every student would be able to receive the same quality education with highly skilled teachers and classrooms equipped with appropriate technology.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, IF YOU WERE AWARE OF MR. COOPER'S PROPOSED CHANGES OR NOT.  MOST PARENTS WERE NOT INFORMED .