Best wishes for your wife and soon to be born baby.

You have, in your brief time as a political participant, brought a keen mind and rational insight into local problems. That will serve the town well, provided you remain thoughtful, instead of just sounding like another noisy gong.

You have implored all to use arguements and fact to support judgements, yet when it comes to local education, you simply rely on test scores when our system is so much more complicated.

I trust you have read the Cambridge Report. We have an achievemet gap in minority groups. We have poverty. We have transingency. We have kids coming to our system without any substantive base of eduction to build upon. We have absentee parents.

I don’t believe any of this applies to you and your family. That means I whole heartedly believe your children will succeed and thrive in our school system.

How do I know this? I am you and my children are thriving in the East Hartford School System. It’s hard work checking their homework every evening after I come home from a long day at work, but being involved as a parent is the magic elixor.

Jon, visit Goodwin School. Set up an appointment with Principal Daniel Broudeur. Ask to speak with teacher Ben Upson. Let them tell you what your children will see and experience during their years at Goodwin School. Ask for a copy of the PTA roster and telephone some parents who have children at the school. They particpate, so ask them what they think.

Speak to Principal Pauline Fusco at Sunset Ridge and see the passion she has for teaching our children. See what she says.

I believe once you experience the school system, you will come away with a better understnding of why the system spends as it does (very high special education needs among other things).

Jon, continue to ask questions since the answers will surprise you.

As an older parent (having a child of 18 in an out of state college), and being an officer in a Connecticut RTC, also a fiscal and social conservative— I taught in Willimantic for 36 recent years. I must tell you that I admire your research and your quest for knowledge and information. That need to know will serve your children and your model will help them develop an intrinsic life long learning attitude.

And what can you do to help each of them daily in his growing and learning, beyond the read and spend time together, watch our for strange television idea infusion and show that your family culture is more important than that we see portrayed on signboards and in malls.

Be careful in your zest for righting the wrongs of educational bureaucracy, that you do not give your own kids the idea that daily school in EH is poorly planned and that the rules do not apply to them, and that you know better than staff they interact with.

Students who know the parent is interested and does stand by their teacher perform so much better than those who say- my father says this school sucks and I don’t need to listen to you.
You can believe that the attitude comes through so easily, and then the student is not dedicated to learning- he is dedicated to feeling superior to the petty rules that regulate when you have hundreds in a public area.

So while you seek the improvement – and I know there is always lots of room for that- just be careful that your young students feel dedicated to the job of learning in whatever class they are taking.

Yes- EH demographics have changed and heaped many new trials on the schools. Right or wrong, the challenges arrive daily. And right or wrong, money is spent to make up for homes/parents who are not engaged in parenting and school readiness.

Yes, work diligently on changing ed. mandates for social purposes that belong in the home. Work for society accepting that parents have a responsibility to send a child to school set to learn.

Just be careful with all the love that shows in thoughtful fathering – you do not undermine your children’s love to learn attitude with rants about what’s wrong with EH education. They are too young to separate your quest for improvement from not valuing their daily work in their office.

Please take the comments in the spirit they are given- from one who loves learners and knows there is much to be improved.