Calypso Elementary School

We transferred our child in from a Charter School and were surprised to learn the current direction BASD is headed. Since the recent installment of a new curriculum a few years ago the students are doing a large about of work and testing on computers (reading, grammar and spelling). This concerned us so I made it a point to speak with the tech teacher, principal, and our child’s teacher about what was going on and how we could have a different curriculum for our child. The answer was that there is no way out of it, even if we sent our child to a different BASD school. I was also told that there is no guarantee that my child and his/her classmates would ever learn to read or write in cursive. The district is anticipating that students will dictate into devices in the future, so learning those skills isn’t a priority. I went a little farther and interviewed some parents of middle schoolers in BASD to find that computers are currently slated to replace regular math instruction as of next school year (2019-2010).
Since technology based instruction does not support our family or community values we have enrolled our child at a different school where they are teaching the same curriculum without computers.
Our experience made me do some hard thinking and in speaking to college professors and doing some research on my own I realize why this rubs us the wrong way so severely…
When looking into the research done on technology use in schools there is great support for it from the makers and sellers of school tech and tech platforms (like Clever, Chrome Books, etc.). When looking at the raw research (not from makers and sellers of tech or platforms) the outcome weighs heavily in the direction of technology in school being harmful, not beneficial, depriving students of necessary face-to-face communication, camaraderie of group learning through interpersonal exchanges and cognitive challenges that come when you don’t have a computer telling you there is only one right answer or that they have found that answer for you already. Should BASD continue down this road the outcome seems grim, so it is our hope that BASB can start taking steps to focus on learning through interpersonal, relational communication in order to ensure that our children are successful communicators, thinkers, leaders and teachers in our community and in the future workplace.