Category Archives: Parents

WARNING: From NH Teacher/Mother on Common Core

We received a letter from a parent/teacher in New Hampshire. She asked that her name be removed. Parents are removing their kids from the public schools but it’s even more telling that this one is a teacher too.
We hear from many parents and teachers and we thought this was one that needs to be read by as many people as possible.

Hi there –

Thanks for all you do on behalf of our children who are apart of the New Hampshire public school system. I’m a former teacher. I have a M.Ed from **** College. I used to teach elementary school but have been a stay at home mom for many years now while still keeping my certification valid.

I’m writing to let you know how Common Core, and other educational reforms, have impacted my children’s lives in the public school system. I have three children.

My two older kids had a great experience going through our public school system in elementary school. They are now in high school. Common Core started in our school system when they were in middle school. The way it has impacted them is the push we’re seeing to bring down the top kids and bring up the lower level learners. Both my older children are higher level learners. One qualified for a higher level math class in 6th grade. Instead of being encourage to pursue this great opportunity, we were being persuaded to keep him in a lower class so he could feel more apart of his peers. We put him in the higher level class anyway. We see similar things in high school. There seems to be a push to keep the higher level learners from being challenged.

My youngest is in second grade and I pulled her from school this year to homeschool. I pulled her also for the lack of being challenged. She is a higher level learner like her older siblings. At her elementary school there was plenty of extra help for the lower achievers. The teachers teach, using the standards, to the rest of the class. The higher level learners are left to be bored. When I asked the principal if there was a way to challenge her in math, I was told to challenge her in other areas of her life like extra curricular. When asked her teacher to challenge her, I was continually dismissed and told she needs to go “wider and deeper” and not higher. In kindergarten, when asked if she could move on to more advanced topics, she was instead given frustrating maze like math challenges to “improve her perseverance”. In 1st grade, my goals for her to be challenged in math were ignored. She cruised through all the math lessons not learning or being challenged.

I feel as though Common Core keeps kids in a box. There isn’t a way to move ahead if you are in first grade and on a third grade math level. When you get to 4th and 5th grade, I’ve heard repeatedly from parents over and over that the way math is taught is confusing for both students and parents and does not make sense. That is not incentive to put my daughter back into public school.

Our elementary school is a great elementary school with super teachers. We moved to this town because of our wonderful school. I would like to see our teachers free to collaborate and create their own standards within our school. The teachers in a school know their community of students best.

In addition, I do not like the Smarter Balanced. I have respectfully refused all standardized testing for all of my children in the past. I don’t like that the test not only tests for academics but also for dispositions and beliefs. I don’t like data being collected about my children. The countries top private schools do not use the Common Core and do not use the Smarter Balanced. We should use these top school as models.

A great number of parents in our school system also do not like the shift to Competency Based Assessments either. Our schools are slowly changing over. Again it’s the parents of the higher level learners that seem to prefer traditional grading. We had a petition in our school system going around on change.org to keep traditional grading. Many parents and students signed it with numerous comments and reasons to keep traditional grading.

We are much happier out of the public school system and not having to deal with all these educational reforms like Common Core, Smarter Balanced and Competency Based Assessments. With homeschooling I can tailor my youngest child’s education to her individual needs. Public school can’t do that at this point in time with the restraints and expectations of Common Core. As I’ve personally seen at various grade levels, there seems to be a push to keep the higher level learners from being challenged. Many other parents I have talked to feel he same way.

I would love to turn back the clock when school was fun and teachers had the autonomy in the classroom to teach towards each childs individual needs and challenge them and take them as far as they can go.

Kindly,
Parent from SAU16

Hate Common Core? Here’s Your Opportunity To Tell Them

It would be nice to let Governor Hassan know how Common Core is failing our children. Unfortunately she does not have town-halls which means that unless you pay to attend a fundraiser for her, it might be difficult for the public to weigh in on this education reform.

The New Hampshire Department of Education is having a listening tour. This will give parents an opportunity to speak directly to the facilitators of these federal programs in our schools.

Take the time to attend one of these meetings if they have a meeting near you. Make sure you take a list of problems you are seeing in your local school.

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Administrators need to do more listening: NO to federal control in grading

Competency Based Ed is similar to the failed Outcome Based Ed fad from the 90′s.
We all know that the federal agenda includes the dumbed down Common Core Standards and a return to the failed Outcome Based Ed Model of dumbed down workforce training.

Included in the Competency Based Ed model, schools have begun switching their grading to the Competency based grading system. Since we can see this happening all over New Hampshire and beyond, it’s easy to see this is coming from more federal intrusion into our local public schools. The feds want to control what your kids eat at lunch, who they share the restroom with, control academic standards and testing, and even the way schools grade their students.
Little is left for the local parents to control.

Competency-based grading caused havoc in Nashua high schools. 92% of students want to get rid of it. 83% of parents want it gone. Even 54% of teachers prefer the old grading system. There were 25% less A’s and 25% more F’s under this new grading system.

Competency-based grading is the stepping stone to the next State reform called PACE, which eliminates local control under the pretense of reducing testing and giving districts more control.

When was the last State mandate that actually gave district more control over education?

It’s important to remember that most of the competencies are “non-academic” skills. These skills are difficult if not impossible to grade objectively. For instance, if a child gets 2+2=4 correct on a test, that’s an objective grade. If that same student is graded on their attitudes towards global warming or if they can “collaborate” that is graded in a more subjective way.

This new grading system means the grades may not reflect their academic knowledge but instead subjectively assess their attitudes, beliefs, values, dispositions, etc.

It’s nice to see a letter instructing the administrators in Nashua to start listening to parents. Our hope is that at some point, they will actually take the advice they’ve been given.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinion/letters/1080406-465/administrators-need-to-do-more-listening.html

Sunday, May 8, 2016
Administrators need to do more listening
Letter to the Editor
Nashua school administrators have a history of leaving parents, students and teachers out of the process when setting important initiatives.

Competency-based grading was approved because board members were told that the grading system was mandatory. It wasn’t mandatory, but the policy was implemented. There were many complaints at the high school from students, parents, and teachers. The number of students failing classes has increased by 25 percent.

The concerns of stakeholders were ignored. After dragging their feet for months, administration finally sent out a survey to parents, students and teachers. The result of the survey revealed overwhelmingly that stakeholders wanted to return to the traditional grading system. Administration is again choosing to ignore the community and to move ahead with this flawed grading system.

School administrators routinely ignore stakeholders. Five years ago, parents and students expressed concern about block scheduling, specifically the lack of continuity for foreign language, math and science courses. Administrators offered skinny classes, but then claimed no students signed up. They never offered skinny classes again. A simple option would be to hold even and odd class days. Block scheduling is maintained, but students get the continuity needed for foreign language, math and science. That solves the problem and costs nothing.

Administrators complain about the lack of parental involvement. Perhaps parents realize their opinions aren’t welcome. If administrators know best, why is Nashua South ranked 76th out of 77 in the state?

Perhaps administrators should stop talking and start listening. Our students would be better served.

Tracy Pappas

Nashua

More Psychological Profiling of NH Students Coming

Thanks to Education Liberty Watch for notifying us of another way the Feds are gathering psychological data on our children. Make sure you REFUSE the Smarter Balanced, SAT, PACE assessments and the NAEP.

Constitutional, Statutory, & Privacy Concerns with Assessing Mindsets in the NAEP
The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) is planning to assess non-academic social and emotional “mindsets” like “grit” as well as school climate in next year’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Here is a summary of the many problems with this approach with details available at Mindsets in NAEP – final:

It is unconstitutional – There is NO constitutional, statutory or moral authority for the federal government to conduct psychological research on innocent American school children via what is supposed to be an academic test.

It violates federal statute prohibiting such activity in one or both of two ways.

It goes against several Supreme Court precedents affirming parent’s inherent rights to direct the education and upbringing of their children.

These types of questions are highly subjective as admitted by leading experts and organizations in the fields of education and mental health.

Because of the weak and gutted federal privacy law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), this very sensitive data can be shared with various agencies of the federal government and third parties and re-disclosed and used for “predictive tests,” which are notoriously subjective and incorrect.

This subjective, allegedly predictive data may then well be used to make life altering decisions for children affecting college entrance, employment, etc.

According to information uncovered at recent US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings, the state of data security at the US Department of Education is appallingly bad, so this sensitive data that the government should not have in the first place is not safe from hackers.

It seems that members of Congress and parents’ rights legal firms are starting to get interested in this situation. Please contact your US Senators and members of the US House of Representatives and ask them to oppose this illegal and unconstitutional plan via the power of the purse, especially if they are on the following committees:

US House Oversight and Government Reform Committee

US House Education and Workforce Committee

US Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee

Thank you and stay tuned!

Why Refuse Common Core Tests? Here Are Your Answers, Parents

WHY REFUSE SMARTER BALANCED TESTING?

Parents should be asking “why does the state want the children to take Common Core tests

Many New Hampshire children did not take the Smarter Balanced Math and ELA assessments last year.
Here are reasons why parents said they did not want their children participating:

The tests don’t count towards your child’s grades or promotional status.
The tests don’t count towards receiving or not receiving special services.
The tests are age and developmentally inappropriate.
The tests are too long.
The tests are developed by business men and corporations, not teachers.
The tests are just another form of data mining. Data is the name of the game.

For those who say, “My child does well on the tests”, what are they doing well on? They are doing well on following orders, filling in bubbles, and navigating an absurd myriad of age and content inappropriate test questions that do not measure what they are learning in class and have NO bearing on where they will be placed the following year.

All you see is a number (1-4), specific results are not given to school districts or to parents – so there is no information at all on what they’ve learned, where their strengths are, or where they need improvement. The tests do not have any bearing on whether or not your child will or will not receive additional services either.

Refusing the state tests does not mean your child will never have exposure to taking a test, nor does it mean you are teaching your child he or she doesn’t have to fulfill their academic responsibility. Refusing means you are aware that these tests mean nothing and you refuse to have your child be a guinea pig for the state and the test manufacturers.

School districts must make the tests available to all students, that does not mean they can force or “encourage” all students to take them. You have the option of refusing. Parents, you are the primary educator of your child, and you have first and final say. Parents rights supersede the rights of the school. Remember that. Always.

Your child provides free labor and research for the test manufacturers. Your schools have sold your child into indentured servitude in order to get grant money and the test manufacturers are cashing in.

The New Hampshire Dept. of Ed., school administrators and test manufacturers rely on your obedience to make your child take the tests, and they love to use threats to get you to do so. Don’t believe the threats you hear about losing funding or testing counting against your child’s teacher, these are scare tactics, and they work on people who don’t know the facts.

We are for tests that measure my child’s growth and progress. We are for tests that give teachers and parents a dashboard to look at and pin point what questions they are struggling with or excelling in. We are for tests that are staggered throughout their school years and do not last for days. We are for meaningful testing.

We want our children educated when they go to school. We don’t send our children to test taking school – we send them to school, just school. Please stop the rampant, abusive, useless testing, and lets get back to educating the whole child. That won’t happen unless we all REFUSE THESE TESTS.

This letter was adapted for Stop Common Core in NH from the original posted by:
Deborah Torres Henning
WCSD Parent and
Founder of NY Guardians”

NASHUA Votes to Stops Funding anti-Parental-Rights : NH School Boards Assoc.

Congratulations to Nashua taxpayers, you will no longer be fleeced by the New Hampshire School Boards Association. The Nashua School Board voted to stop paying dues to the New Hampshire School Boards Association today. (NHSBA)

Everyone needs to contact their local school board members and ask them to do the same. Tell them to eliminate funding of “dues and membership” to the New Hampshire School Boards Association and the New Hampshire School Administrators Association.

These two associations hire and pay six figure salaries to lobbyists that oppose local control of education.

The school board association sends out weekly emails but never designates which way they are lobbying on any particular bill. Nor do they seek input from school boards on these bills.

—The state prohibits the use of its funds from being directly or indirectly used to hire lobbyists under RSA 15. But schools pay dues to these organizations who then hire the lobbyists. Are they ignoring state law or just shuffling the money around?

RSA 15:5 Prohibited Activities. –
I. Except as provided in paragraph II, no recipient of a grant or appropriation of state funds may use the state funds to lobby or attempt to influence legislation, participate in political activity, or contribute funds to any entity engaged in these activities.
II. Any recipient of a grant or appropriation of state funds that wishes to engage in any of the activities prohibited in paragraph I, or contribute funds to any entity engaged in these activities, shall segregate the state funds in such a manner that such funds are physically and financially separate from any non-state funds that may be used for any of these purposes. Mere bookkeeping separation of the state funds from other moneys shall not be sufficient.
Source. 2006, 21:7, eff. June 2, 2006.

When the school district allocates money for professional dues, this money is often pooled with membership dues from other districts and then used to hire a lobbyist. Who controls this lobbyist? Most taxpayers are unaware that their money may be indirectly use against them when they testify before their state legislature. Many times taxpayers are inadvertently funding their opposition without their knowledge. How can the people direct or control the voice of these lobbyists, which not only undermines their voice because a lobbyist can spend weeks in Concord in opposition to their bill, but it discourages individual citizen participation?

NH School Boards Association:list of Bills the NHSBA OPPOSED by using YOUR money:
*HB 1231 relative to school district policy regarding obj. course material
*HB1366 relative to the definition of educational competencies
*SB 354 requiring the commissioner and deputy commission to be confirmed by a joint session of the general court
*SB 355 requiring the member of the state board of education to be elected by a joint session of the general court
*SB 320 relative to non-academic surveys administered by a public school to its students.

For 2010 nearly all the NHSBA revenue $881k came from taxpayers through memberships $734k, policy subscriptions $72k, school district services $37k, school board development $16k, etc. The only revenue which isn’t directly from the tax payers is NHSBA’s investment income $18k. Yet NHSBA hides their policy objectives FROM THE PEOPLE!!!

The NH School Administrators Association‘s lobbyist signed a letter in 2012 to support a Statewide Longitudinal Database federal grant application, which provides private student-level data to the federal government.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/slds/pdf/NewHampshire2012.pdf page 80

How many taxpayers in New Hampshire, particularly parents, would have given their consent for this type of data-mining of their child’s private information? None. Yet using local taxpayer money, this lobbyist was hired with local taxpayer money and he supported a longitudinal data base that now tracks and stores some 400 data points of information on each and every New Hampshire student.

Taxpayers and parents need to start demanding that their board members vote to STOP funding lobbyists who work against parental rights. If Nashua can do it, all schools in New Hampshire can do the same.

What does it take to mobilize NH parents?

New Hampshire’s legacy in education has been pretty bad during the Lynch and Hassan administration. In spite of their legacy, we are fortunate that our students have done pretty well when compared to students across the country.

New Hampshire’s Department of Education developed and supported poorly written academic standards pre-Common Core and now with Common Core, we are seeing they’re not much better.

Compare that to our friends just to the south of us in Massachusetts. The Mass. Department of Education, when led by Dr. Sandra Stotsky, developed some of the best academic standards in the country. Not only did they set a goal of offering their schools the best, they then went to work on reforms that led their students to finish at the top.

Even with a large metropolitan city like Boston, their students were receiving a quality education and with far bigger challenges than what New Hampshire faces. They managed to make sure that superior quality, extended to children in all socio-economic conditions.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

New Hampshire would be wise to learn from this example. With the right Governor, and the right leader in the Dept. of Ed. you can expect schools to offer your children the best education available.

So why isn’t that happening in New Hampshire?

First we haven’t had the leadership from both Governors Lynch or Hassan. Both have failed to prioritize public education.

Under Governor Patrick, they abandoned all they had accomplished and signed on to the Common Core reforms. Massachusetts parents are now in an uproar.

They’ve gathered over 65k signatures from parents across Mass. in an effort to rid their schools from the Common Core reforms. Going from the best to Common Core has angered parents across the state.

This should be an example to parents in New Hampshire. It takes moms and dads to join together to fight for their children and their public schools.

Too many it seems, are content to accept mediocrity. Why?

If you want to improve the state of public education, you have to fight for it. You have to stop thinking that throwing tax dollars at your school is going to offer your child the best. It’s not.

We encourage you to read the info below from Mass. Get involved in this fight in New Hampshire and work with other parents and activists to look at meaningful ways to improve the quality of standards, testing and curriculum.

Why should our kids get the short end of the stick? If you want change, you have to fight for it.

END Common Core Massachusetts
3 hrs
COMMON CORE OPPONENTS “ANXIOUS” ABOUT MEETING SIGNATURE REQUIREMENT
By Michael Norton
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, NOV. 19, 2015….Donna Colorio is anxious and exhausted, but happy.

The former Worcester School Committee member has been leading a volunteer effort to gather the 64,750 certified voter signatures needed to place a proposed repeal of Common Core education standards on the 2016 statewide ballot.

“I’m absolutely positively so happy we did this, even though it took everything out of my people,” Colorio, founder of the Common Core Forum told the News Service Thursday morning. “We did do something we believe in so much.”

Colorio estimated her team of volunteers, which she pegged at about 500, collected more than 90,000 signatures requiring weeks of work. About half of those volunteers, she said, collected signatures daily or on weekends at supermarkets, soccer games and other public places.

The question would ask voters to rescind the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s vote in July 2010 to adopt the Common Core standards for math and English and to restore curriculum frameworks that were in place prior to that vote.

While volunteers were gathering signatures, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education wrapped up a long process on Tuesday by voting to move away from the MCAS standardized student assessment exam to a hybrid exam based on the MCAS and the PARCC, which was developed by a national consortium is based on the Common Core standards.

Colorio sees the hybrid, or MCAS 2.0, as a “rebranded” PARCC.

“Now more than anything we’re so glad we did this,” she said. “The MCAS 2.0 is nothing but the PARCC test … We are determined more than anything to get this passed.”

Local clerks throughout Massachusetts received thousands of signatures from various campaigns by Wednesday’s deadline and are in the process of certifying that the signatures are those of registered voters.

Campaigns typically find some of their signatures are not certified – signatures must be legible, the address where the voter is registered must be provided, and no more than one quarter of the certified signatures may be collected in one county.

“I think we’re going to come right down to the wire,” said Colorio, who at another point in the interview said, “I think we’ll make it.”

Campaigns to legalize marijuana and expand access to charter schools previously announced their signature counts, expressing confidence that they’ve cleared the certified signature threshold.

Both of those campaigns paid people to collect signatures, an option Colorio used at the end of her campaign to collect 2,000 signatures.

She said it costs $2.75 to $4 per raw signature

“It’s expensive. We didn’t have the money,” Colorio said when asked why she didn’t rely more on paid signature gatherers.

A Worcester School Committee member from 2011 until 2013, Colorio described the campaign as “grass roots” and one that received donations of mostly $10 or $20.

“A majority of the committee people were parents and teachers,” she said. “We’re feeling extremely anxious right now, but relieved in knowing we did all we can do.”

Gov. Charlie Baker, while campaigning for the Corner Office in 2010, testified against adopting the Common Core standards.

“I would love him to write an executive order right now and get us out of the Common core and the PARCC testing,” Colorio said.

END
11/19/2015

When did you give up local control to the NH Commissioner of Ed? Virginia Barry

NH residents need to start asking themselves, when did they give up local control to the Commissioner of Education, Virginia Barry?
Has our State Commissioner of Education overstepped her boundaries AGAIN?
Who pays the Superintendents?
Who hires and fires the Superintendents?
It’s not the Commissioner, and she has NO right to put our administrators in a position where they cannot share information with the people who pay their salary.
The NH Dept. of Education is again, overstepping their authority and grabbing control away from local communities.

From the Girard at Large web site:

MSD: Withholding Smarter Balanced Assessment scores

The Manchester School District, in response to a right to know request we filed last Thursday, has acknowledged it has received the city’s Smarter Balanced Assessment scores from the state Department of Education and has had them for several weeks. However, in an email sent to us yesterday, Superintendent Debra Livingston denied our request for the scores to be released, saying they would be released in conjunction with the state D o E. (Interestingly, she copied the entire school board on her response, despite our not copying them on our inquiry.)

Results withheld
Just four hours later, the district issued a statement saying the scores will be available to parents and the public on November twelfth. The statement also announced that S A U staff will quote

“soon be reviewing the data and preparing instructional materials for principals and teachers to use in order to interpret and make the best use of the data.”

It also said the data will be sent to the schools later this week and given to teachers on Monday, September twenty eighth. Livingston said the data would be used to quote “establish a baseline of achievement.”

Glassner: Got the info
We made the inquiry after State Board of Education Chair Tom Raffio told Sid Glassner, during his show Inside Education on this radio station, that the state had the assessment scoring and had sent it to school districts weeks ago. Glassner discussed it at length last Thursday during the Girard at Large “Is Our Children Learning?” segment. According to the state department of education, the scores were supposed to be released in July so districts could use the data to inform instruction in the coming school year.

WARNING To NH PARENTS: Schools Will Now Mentally Evaluate Your Children

What is the purpose of public education? That is the question everyone needs to ask themselves.

Is it for workforce development? Under the Common Core reform, we are seeing a radical shift away from a academic based education to dumbed down workforce development.

Within this transformation we are seeing disturbing trends like the massive data collection on students. We are also witnessing another disturbing trend, and that is the shift to psychological services for students.

The Associated Press recently reported that, “N.H. schools seek to address mental health issues among students.” But what does this mean for NH students attending a public school?

According to the article, “High school officials are rolling out programs to help combat depression, anxiety and other mental health issues among New Hampshire students…..Many schools are taking proactive roles to stem the tide of those issues. Dover and Portsmouth high schools are providing individualized, intensive programs to help students work through their problems.”

So now our public schools that are transforming into dumbed down workforce training centers, will also provide psychological services too?

Is anyone disturbed by this radical transformation?

It’s important to note that a few local activists have been attempting to stop this radical transformation. For instance Michelle Levell wrote this article in 2013 when the New Hampshire Board of Ed mandated psychological services to students without parental consent.

Levell highlights the problems in the proposed rules calling attention to psychological services that can be administered without parental consent, no “opt-out” provision, and no fiscal note identifying the costs involved.

Parents need to begin the process of figuring out if their children can be treated without their knowledge or consent.
If their children are evaluated and treated, what kind of privacy protections are in place?
Where does the information gathered on their student go?
Can a parent notify the school and request that their child NOT be evaluated or treated?
In other words, can you opt your children out of any kind of psychological evaluation?
What will this cost the local taxpayers?

The New Hampshire Board of Education continually claims that all rules imposed on our local schools are derived from legislation passed by your local elected representatives. What legislation was passed in New Hampshire that gives authority to the APPOINTED Board of Ed Members to MANDATE this kind of treatment in our local schools?

The American Psychological Association has a STRICT code of ethics. It is important for parents to fully understand the governing factors licensed medical professionals must follow when treating patients. Are those who are treating students in New Hampshire licensed medical professionals? Do they follow the strict code of ethics when treating students?

We know that our schools are administering psychometric assessments without parental permission and currently ignoring the APA code of ethics. If school administrators are willing to ignore the code of ethics when testing your children, would they ignore the code of ethics when treating your children for mental illness?

Should our public schools now become the hub for social services? Or should they go back to focusing on educating our children?

We understand that there are going to be children who need social services who may not have access to needed treatment. Schools can certainly guide families to those services if needed. However changing the make-up of public education in such a radical way will only further dilute the academic foundation our children need and deserve.

If your child breaks their arm the parent is notified and the child is then taken by the parent to seek medical attention from licensed medical professionals. The local school is not in the business of administering medical treatment to children. That is not their mission.
So why are we allowing our local schools to become mental health facilities for our children?

JOYCE CRAIG, Candidate for Mayor: BAD For Manchester?

They say a politician’s campaign advisor says a lot about the candidate so let’s take a look at a candidate for Mayor in Manchester, NH.

Joyce Craig (D) has decided to run for Mayor in Manchester. Who did she ask to be her co-Chair on her election committee? Rep. Mary Heath who represents Manchester Ward 7……..
““I am honored to have Alderman Bill Cashin, Representative Mary Heath, Dave Allen and Kerry Schleyer as co-chairs of my campaign for Mayor of Manchester. I look forward to working with them. It’s time to move Manchester forward.”

How is Rep. Mary Heath on the issue of Common Core and parental rights? Unfortunately NOT GOOD at all.

Let’s look at her voting record this past year and you will see a consistent record of supporting the dumbed down Common Core Standards (rejected by parents in Manchester) and in opposition to parental rights.
We encourage you to go through her entire voting record.

Rep. Mary Heath voted AGAINST
1) SB101 (A SENATE BILL) AN ACT prohibiting the state from requiring implementation of common core standards.
2) HB276 (A HOUSE BILL) This bill prohibits the state board of education from adopting a rule requiring a school district or any public school to implement the common core state standards. The bill also requires a school board that elects not to implement or participate in the common core state standards or other minimum educational standards to adopt and implement educational standards that meet or exceed those standards.

***NOTE: Some State Legislators had a preference for one over the other however Rep. Heath opposed BOTH.

3) Rep. Heath voted to KILL HB302 which would require the department of education to submit all grant applications to the house of representatives committee concerned with educational issues for a public hearing and comments.

***NOTE: A vote against transparency since so many of these grant applications identify the local and state power in education that is given up for money.

4) Rep. Heath voted AGAINST Manchester’s Rep. Sullivan’s Bill supporting parental rights. HB332AN ACT relative to school district policy regarding objectionable course material. This bill requires school districts to provide advance notice to parents and legal guardians of course material involving discussion of human sexuality or human sexual education.

5) Rep. Heath voted against HB578 AN ACT relative to state board of education compliance with unfunded federal education mandates. This bill prohibits the state board of education from adopting rules that require a school district to comply with a federally mandated curriculum, method of instruction, or statewide assessment program which is not fully paid by federal funds.

It’s important to note that Rep. Heath’s record is NOT Joyce Craig’s record. However it certainly raises red flags that parents should be concerned about.

A suggestion would be to ask Joyce Craig to explain where she stands on all of these votes? With Rep. Heath and against parents in Manchester? IF she opposes Rep. Heath and stands with parents, why would she ask Rep. Heath to be her campaign manager?

There are other candidates in the race for Mayor in Manchester. It’s important to also note that Mayoral candidate Patrick Arnold (D) attended several school board meetings with parents who opposed Common Core but chose not to speak up on their behalf. That certainly causes us to wonder, where’s the leadership from Patrick Arnold?

Are the democrats willing to challenge and even fight for the parents in Manchester on this important issue? Or are they going to run a campaign that is more about political pandering but then do nothing to help the situation in Manchester if elected?

Parents need to ASK the tough questions of all of the candidates. What are they willing to do if elected?

So far their actions leave many of us thinking, things may actually get worse if they are elected.