Parents in Williamsville are angry.
In many school districts, parents are unhappy about a coming school year that will entail students attending classes in person only two days a week – if at all.
But in the region’s largest suburban district – and one of the wealthiest – parents are downright fuming.
“Williamsville, unfortunately, is dropping the ball in this whole process. There’s so many parents in this community right now that are so up in arms about what’s happening,” Laura Smith, a parent in the district, told the superintendent during a recent meeting. “Every other district surrounding us has a plan in place. They have a backup plan. And they know what’s going on.
“I don’t understand why our district – being one of the No. 1 districts – is not coming up with our own great plan, or looking to other districts for direction.”
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During the past several days, schools across the state have been holding parent forums that the state recently required.
Williamsville’s three-hour parent forum on Wednesday was – like those held by several local districts last week – conducted via Zoom. But unlike the forums held in many other districts, the one in Williamsville was far from civil. Not every parent complained, but some were so unhappy with the answers they got that some have started circulating a petition calling for the district to fire Superintendent Scott Martzloff.
He fielded questions from parents in a back and forth format in which one parent at a time was patched in through an audio feed. In some cases, he went back and forth for more than 10 minutes with parents in exchanges that often became heated.
Williamsville’s reopening plan calls for a hybrid option in which students are in school two days a week. On Wednesdays, remote instruction will be provided to all students. And on the other two days a week, Martzloff explained, there would be no instruction. Students will be given assignments to work on, he said.
“On the two days students are not in school, we cannot provide online learning at this time,” the superintendent told parents. “However, students will have work that they need to complete, in order to turn it back into their teacher when they go back to school. It’ll be more like homework that they’re given.”
That did not sit well with parents. Many said they will need to work during the week, so their children will be on their own on those days they are not receiving direct instruction from teachers.
“Are kids being held responsible for unfinished work on those days that they’re home, to be left to their own devices?” asked Kara Buscaglia, an attorney and a parent.
“Yes,” Martzloff said.
“So how is that equitable, if they’re not having a teacher provide it to them, how is it equitable that some kids aren’t actually being taught?” she asked.
“It will 100% be an issue in my life, because we are a two-parent working family and I have four children, one starting kindergarten,” Buscaglia continued. “My 12-year-old will not be responsible to make sure my kindergartner is sitting in front of a computer and doing lessons. It’s just not going to work while I’m in court. It won’t work. And my concern is that this is not equitable education.”
Williamsville parents will have the option to choose remote instruction five days a week. An hour before the meeting began, the district sent to parents a list of which classes would and would not be offered for students who will be doing fully remote learning.
Those that will not be offered for fully remote high school students: All advanced placement courses. All English and social studies electives. All computer programming classes. All business, technology and music courses.
And, it seems, the advanced math course recommended for Buscaglia’s seventh-grade son.
“I can’t have him do virtual and still get the programs he’s been recommended for,” Buscaglia said. “How is that equal education?”
Other complaints
The way the district selected parents for a reopening committee also came under fire.
In one of the more civil exchanges of the meeting, Shashidhar Ramchandrareddy, a dentist and a father, wanted to know why there were no people of color among the parents that the district said it selected randomly to serve on a reopening committee.
“You said you randomly selected parents to be on the committee,” he said. “How did that randomness end up happening? I didn’t see any people of color on that committee.”
“We don’t carry information in our internal systems that determine which parents are people of color and which are not,” Martzloff said.
Ramchandrareddy pressed on, asking whether the district had used a lottery system. The superintendent told him that the district chose 17 of the 125 parents who volunteered. Ramchandrareddy wondered why he was not chosen, as he responded immediately to the call for volunteers.
“We weren’t looking to do it by how quickly someone responded,” Martzloff said. “We were looking to pick people that represent our community. And that’s what we did.”
“Are you saying that I am not representing the community well?” Ramchandrareddy asked.
“No, I didn’t say that,” Martzloff said. “I just said we were trying to pick a diverse group of parents.”
Several parents questioned the district’s approach to addressing Covid-19 concerns in the buildings, from the way schools planned to take students’ temperatures to the district’s decision not to purchase plexiglass shields for each student's desk.
And, by the end of the evening, some parents were clearly exasperated by what they felt was Martzloff’s attitude.
“It doesn’t really seem like Williamsville has the handle on this that all the schools in Erie County have,” one parent told Martzloff. “Plus, I noticed that a lot of the time during this, you’ve been rolling your eyes a lot at what people have been saying. And that isn’t a position that we appreciate coming from our superintendent.”
