Gifted Education Improvements Needed in the Pennsbury School District
- Annette Dearolf
- Closed on
- Target:
- Dr. William Gretzula, Superintendent of the Pennsbury School District
- Region:
- United States of America
Thank you to everyone who signed the petition! We met with Dr. Gretzula and gave him this petition and the supporting documents. He was open to our suggestions and knows that we are a passionate group. Please come out to the Pennsbury PAGE meeting on Monday, April 16th at 7pm in the Pennwood auditorium (enter on the Reolofs Road side) to hear Dr. Gretzula speak about the direction of Gifted Education and the items covered when members of the PPAGE executive board met with him last month. Thank you again! Please feel free to contact us at PAGEatPennsbury@gmail.com
Pennsbury PAGE
Pennsbury Affiliate of the Pennsylvania Association for Gifted Education
SUMMARY FOR PARENTS AND ADVOCATES OF GIFTED AND ACADEMICALLY TALENTED CHILDREN IN THE PENNSBURY SCHOOL DISTRICT
Gifted Education and Suggested Improvements
Attached is a letter to the Superintendent of Pennsbury School District (Pennsbury), highlighting certain problems or practices that we believe should be corrected. If you agree with this, we invite you to sign the letter. Our expectation is that Pennsbury will be responsive to our request and will work with us to implement the changes. In summary, these are the items that we want Pennsbury to address.
Implement the recommendations of the K-8 Gifted Program Quality Review (February 2013) (GPQR) to improve the Pennsbury gifted program and bring it into compliance with Chapter 16.
Elementary School
•Challenge students in all their classes and in all academic areas.
•Provide both the options of acceleration and enrichment for students whose math achievement and performance levels are beyond present course or grade level.
Middle School
•Provide enrichment opportunities in science and social studies similar those in math and language arts.
•Extend the current middle school MG seminar beyond its current 45 days per year duration so that students are grouped with their intellectual peers for a significant part of the instructional day throughout the entire school year.
High School
•Discontinue the practice of removing children from the gifted program (their GIEP) without re-evaluations.
•Stop requiring students to accept an enrichment project in order to retain their GIEP.
•Provide enrichment projects outside of the 4 core subjects, in all classes. These opportunities can be initially offered in a similar fashion to the protocol used by honors colleges.
•Agree to continue Gifted Seminar as a permanent part of the curriculum, with sections dedicated to gifted students.
•Consider high school level GIEP waivers that would sign a student out of gifted services for a stated period of time, but then allow the student to opt back in at the end of that time, rather than permanently eliminating the Gifted designation of child.
District Level
•Review, revise and share the goals, objectives, philosophy, and vision of the gifted program.
•Provide a dedicated district-wide gifted leadership position to coordinate all aspects of programming for the gifted as per the Gifted Program Quality Review, Need #2 to Question #5.
ATTACHMENTS (you may have to copy the link into your browser):
Letter to Dr. Gretzula: https://drive.google.com/open?id=19jHrrE-LdV4LJ2GIx6_U8cAyhFXkQePy
Chapter 16: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UUmdxuGE2YAXYEuZJQiOT21pozaBN9kK
Gifted Program Quality Review 2013: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FZBhB_K6gwbDFfRdxDMX96GONiaXcJs7
GPQR Response 2013: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_lBJnO0GxhzVpTX6TpCL8qGN8IPX1_4e
GPQR Update 2014: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gU3vdKtS8lJFgoYRuWrx1T7Lz21lPDSF
PSU Honors Option: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1a11bPHX7KH-H8G7W-FISZ2_DGDm20GPD
NJIT Honors Enhancement: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_kZScAdfDvQMI4P5EstSqZXwKEuCcpkv
We, the parents and advocates of gifted and academically talented students of the Pennsbury School District (Pennsbury), do not feel that the Gifted Education Program is meeting our students’ needs and strengths. Not only is it not meeting the needs of our students, we believe that the district is violating Chapter 16 of the Educuation Code in many ways to the detriment of our children's education. We want to work constructively with Pennsbury administration to implement what we believe are necessary changes and additions to the program at the elementary, middle, and high school levels, along with needed changes at the district wide level.
The Gifted Education Improvements Needed in the Pennsbury School District petition to Dr. William Gretzula, Superintendent of the Pennsbury School District was written by Annette Dearolf and is in the category Education at GoPetition.