The Board of Education for Allendale Public Schools recently proposed joining the NSBLC (https://nationalschoolboardleadershipcouncil). Membership in NSBLC will be harmful for many students in our district.

Among other things, NSBLC advocates for separating students who are "learning challenged" from their peers and placing them in separate, exclusive classrooms or entirely different schools so they can "pursue their efforts to become a benefit to society." The NSLBC firmly believes that the practice of including learning challenged students in traditional classrooms unduly strains resources, negatively impacting students who are not learning challenged. This means any student who receives any sort of accommodation (additional direction, extra time for tests, quiet study space, etc) for any reason is perceived as a burden on the classroom and is at risk of being excluded from a classroom of their peers.

The Board of Education will be discussing this proposal on January 23, 2023 and voting on whether to move forward with this change on February 13, 2023.

To protect all students, please sign this petition. We will bring the signatures to the board's attention on February 13, 2023 to show that our community does not agree with adopting this proposal.