Perception vs. Reality

Congratulations to David Bernsley as our new high school principal. Unfortunately, Mr. Bernsley’s perception of our district is far from the reality. This “Cadillac” has some work to do to become a leader academically. There are 16 school districts in Orange County. Monroe-Woodbury stands at sixth in overall academic performance of those 16 districts. The reality is our third grade English Language Arts (ELA) is 10th; fourth grade ELA is sixth; fifth grade ELA is fourth; sixth grade also is fourth; seventh grade ELA slips to fifth; and 8th Grade ELA is fourth. In Math our third grade is seventh of 16; four grade math also is seventh; fifth grade Math is better at sixth; sixth grade math slips back to seventh; and eighth grade math comes in fourth out of 16. Our fourth grade science is ranked eighth of 16, while eighth grade science is second in the county. High school English puts us sixth of 16 while high school math puts us second in the county. All data is from New York State Education Department School District Report cards. The academic leaders in Orange County are Tuxedo followed by Cornwall, then Warwick, with Greenwood Lake and Florida achieving better performance than Monroe-Woodbury. Parents of elementary school children should be taking notes and asking some very hard questions to our school board, their children’s teachers and administrators. Our district has more than 200 employees who are compensated more than $100K. Last year those employees received an average - yes average - pay increase from year to year of 10.7 percent. We pay a lot in taxes and we should be the best academically. I for one would like to know what the Monroe-Woodbury Board of Education is going to do to put this district back as number one in Orange County. We were there before and we must do it again without taking any more money from the taxpayer. We are not first academically in any area. John C. Collins Monroe