Preserving Community Public Schools

Open Letter- via email dated Oct 13, 2013 To the Honorable Governor Martin O'Malley, As you know, Garrett County Schools are outstanding! They provide comprehensive and well-aligned curricula, instituting the entirety of Comprehensive Reform Models. Garrett County public schools are immersed in cutting-edge practice with expert, highly credentialed staff. These staffs are dedicated to maintaining achievements in educational performance inclusive of Common Core and Maryland Challenge Initiatives. These assimilated and integrated practices account for the outstanding achievements and testing performance scores on Maryland School Assessment (MSA) tests. The systems' approach, experientially and incrementally, is driven by an attentiveness to both mandated and integrated concepts including environmental literacy, school enrichment and universal design for learning to insure, intellectually challenging schools. The students' achievement is compelling, further, the integrative aspects and inclusion of exceptional student populations is trademark of the caring, empathic culture of our schools. Garrett County professional school leadership, for the past 20-years, has contributed to progressive-minded institutional memory, imprinting a legacy for ongoing accelerated standard-building and embedded contingency planning; a ‘snowballing' of proficiencies. Observers and critics would find it difficult to find gaps in any of the formative or summative assessments. In fact, leadership and school improvement teams in planning strategies have fully embraced each of the Partnership for 21st Century recommendations.

These forward-thinking and savvy, evidenced-based strategies have kept the publi