OCR Text |
Show Briscoe visits New York schools FARMINGTON- Dr. Raymond Briscoe, member of the Davis County Board of Education, recently re-cently returned home from a visit to the public schools of New York City. His observations were presented at the Oct. 11 meeting of the Board of Education. Briscoe rioted that the New York City system operates as one huge school district with many local school boards that work for no compensation handling the immediate im-mediate affairs of the local schools. "There are more kids going to school in New York City than there are people living in Utah," Briscoe stated. According to Briscoe, the educators in New York are very willing to allow many local innovative in-novative programs. He visited a lab schools for gifted junior high and elementary students, a young mothers' program, a high school where the studentbody were all interested in-terested in becoming school teachers and a neighborhood school located on Roosevelt Island in the East River. In some cases, several schools were housed in one building. Schools were not large. The junior ju-nior high lab school had fewer than 400 children. The student-teacher ratio in most cases was about 20 to one. Briscoe was impressed with Junior Ju-nior High 167. Some programs this school offered were a Russian awareness program and a debate program. They also fielded a math team consisting of four students who gave up their lunch period to practice math skills. "Those who make the math team are accorded as much positive regard as any athletes are in our schools,' ' Briscoe said. Some observations Briscoe made after his tour of New York City schools were as follows: The press is more friendly towards education in the East than it is in the West; the educational bureaucracy is more' cumbersome in the East; buildings are occupied for sqme educational programs involving young people or adults until 8 p.m. each evening; there are many pros to having a culturally diversified studentbody. Briscoe also stated, "We are not working our kids hard enough academically aca-demically among the middle ability range. We do a good job reaching those students preparing for college, but we are not challenging our average kids," he concluded. |