Big news seems to be that West Chester Area School District is maintaining it’s bond rating.  They get what they pay for I suppse, but the reviews I hear on this school district don’t qualify as raves.

Start with how much bullying is tolerated in the elementary and middle schools, how they don’t really want gifted student programs, and many other issues.  What happened to the language programs in at least the elementary schools? What’s up with in essence, science in a box?  I saw first hand via a friend, what qualified as “homework” in basics like social studies.

All I see out of West Chester Area School District is a dumbing down of students.   I remember last spring something coming out about rankings – I don’t remember West Chester being so hot  when it came to stacking up side by side against other school districts.  According to the Philadelphia Business Journal the top ten included Tredyffrin-Easttown, Radnor, Lower Merion, Unionville-Chadds Ford, Central Bucks and others.  But not West Chester. West Chester according to the statistics was 41 in this ranking of PSSA scores.

Where do charter schools and private and catholic schools fit into this equation? Because it seems to me a lot of folks in Chester County have their kds in those kinds of schools to escape the public school system.

Whatever, I don’t pretend to be an expert or even an afficianado of public schools, but I don’t understand how a district I hear serious complaints about is rated so high? But then again, I don’t pretend to understand school districts or school boards – truthfully most of the time to me all I hear out of them is noise – kind of like what Peppermint Patty and the rest of the Pesnuts gang hear when the teacher is talking – that wahhh-wahhh-wahhh-blahhh-blahh-blahh noise.

Maybe West Chester Area School District is all that and a bag of chips.  I don’t know. There is always a first time.