School board forum opens avenue for raising concerns

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Amanda Dick
  • 86th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
LANDSTUHL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, Germany --  The Department of Defense Dependent Schools Europe Kaiserslautern District School Advisory Board, comprised of representatives from each school committee, held a public forum here Feb. 23.

Parents, school administrators, members from the district office and Air Force and Army representatives attended the forum to hear the latest issues facing schools in the district and to voice their concerns.

"We like to encourage people who have issues or questions about the school, particularly if they don't feel like they're being heard through the proper channels," said Judi Parker, Kaiserslautern SAB president and committee representative for Kaiserslautern Middle School. "It's a great chance to be face-to-face with superintendents, principals, vice principals and representatives from the various schools."

The guest speaker for the evening was Dr. Peggy Hoffman-Schmidt, Kaiserslautern District instructional systems specialist educational generalist. Her topic was how to gain higher student achievement. She said the way to accomplish this, among other things, is by holding to the district vision of "standards based, data driven, student focused for higher student achievement."

Each school representative gave an account of what concerns their schools were facing. Following that, members from the district office spoke about some major matters being resolved.

Lawanna Mangleburg, Kaiserslautern District superintendent, said Department of Defense Education Activity schools worldwide had been granted a more than 3 billion increase between Fiscal Year 2011 and 2015, based upon an infrastructure overview where they rated the facilities on a Q-1 through Q-4 quality-rating -- with Q-1 being the best.

"Our goal is to replace all the schools rated Q-4 and modernize all the schools rated Q-3," she said. "In our district, 13 out of the 19 are included on the Q-3 and Q-4 list."

During the meeting, Frank Simone, Kaiserslautern District education operations chief, also addressed student centralized registration and re-registration. They are scheduled to kick-off a test run in March when parents re-register their children for the next school year.

If parents have more than one child attending two different schools, they will now be able to re-register/register their children at the same time all in one stop, instead of going to each school to register each child.

Once the business part of the meeting was completed, the SAB opened the floor for questions and discussions.

Some of the issues brought up were road and weather conditions, transportation and lunch accounts.

For Jordana Land, wife of Army Maj. Lewis Land, communication when schools are closed or delayed was a big issue for her. She felt there could be better flow of information and suggested a few ideas, which were taken and will be routed for possible action.

Though Mrs. Land has been here for four years, this is the first time she has been to a forum.

"I felt this was an opportunity to speak directly to the people who make the important decisions," said the mother of two school-aged children. "Attending the forums helps to get my suggestions, as well as other parents' suggestions, out on the table to help make improvements to the current guidelines."

And, that is just what these forums are for.

"I think it's important because it's another opportunity to be informed about the newest changes and the newest issues that are happening," Mrs. Parker said. "We're almost always getting updated as to the status of constructions, of numbers. So, it's a chance to be informed, and it's also a chance to ask questions and get answers."

Out of the 9,520 students in the Kaiserslautern District, 6,985 are in the Kaiserslautern Military Community.

Four public forums are held each year. The next School Advisory Board forum is scheduled for March 23 at 6 p.m. on Sembach Annex, Germany.