Dear Editor,

I read the op-ed by Superintendent Dr. Danny Merck, touting his trip to Finland. Merck “discovered” the way to improve academic performance in Pickens County is by better feeding students, having them use their hands to build things, test them less, and increase recess time.

Good grief. I can picture our rubberstamping school board nodding their heads in agreement to all of this nonsense.

According to the most recent SC Ready results, in Pickens County only 45 percent of the students read at or above grade level. How about focusing on teaching the students to better read instead?

Examining the most recent figures in our school district, K-12 enrollment has fallen five years in a row and is nearly 600 students less than it was in 2013-14.

As charter schools increase, private schools become more accessible, and home school is expanding, when parents are given more choices, they leave the system.

What’s more frightening, is how teachers are also beginning to vote with their feet as well. Back when, the teacher turnover rate in our district was 6 percent. It then rose to 7.1 percent in 2013, 8.9 percent in 2015, 10.3 percent in 2016, 10.6 percent in 2017 and this past year it was about 10 percent.

None of this rocket science nor does it require junkets to Europe to figure out. Just ask the teachers in one of our county schools what some of the problems are. They will tell you.

First, teachers become teachers because they want to go into a classroom and freely teach children as they see fit. Unfortunately, that freedom is being grinned out of the classroom by top-down bureaucrats who haven’t taught in a decade or two. They tell teachers what to teach, when to teach it, how to teach it and how long to teach it. And teachers are observed, evaluated and have to report on it every inch along the way.

Second, there is a lack of discipline – too many students do not follow instruction, are disregarding the rules, disrespecting teachers and bullying other students. Students need structure, boundaries and consequences. That’s fading because administrators are doing little to nothing about discipline these days.

Third, more students are now struggling with social, psychological and emotional issues and they are not getting the clinical support they need. Simply put, most leaders in our schools and the district office do not see or understand these clinical problems.

If a second grader is not reading at grade level, it is not because he needs more recess time. Likely, the parent doesn’t read at home with the child. This is a social problem to do with the parent-child relationship, not anything to do with the bell schedule.

If Janie is coming in everyday crying her eyes out because mommy is on meth, daddy is MIA and she is being bumped from DDS to Grandma’s to Aunt Louise’s, urging her to work more with her hands isn’t going to help either.

Low turnover and a stable core of teachers was the bedrock of our school district and districts throughout the state. That is no longer the case and it’s another sign the system is crumbling under the weight of the excessive top-down control.

We can pay teachers higher salaries to tolerate all this or we can fix these problems. Unfortunately, our leaders are doing the former because they simply do not see or understand these problems, all of which are right under their noses.

Alex Saitta

Pickens, SC