I laughed when a Board member recently told me that Kevin Carroll had told the interim Superintendent that a May meeting with the District’s HS GT community “went well”.
I was at that meeting. I don’t know whether Kevin Carroll is delusional, from another planet or wanted his boss to believe something happened that didn’t happen. But calling what transpired during that meeting as “went well” is far from how the GT parents and students would characterize that meeting.
Maybe if you want to define “went well” as having the opportunity to present a completely misleading and intentionally deceptive set of SBB numbers to the HS GT community, but from the first question onward, “went well” is not how I would describe that meeting.
Maybe Kevin doesn’t quite grasp the concept that there is a high probability that GT students have intelligent parents. Maybe Kevin doesn’t understand that these parents are not going to be fooled by some attempted slick presentation and they will call him out for attempting to intentionally deceive and mislead them with a set of SBB numbers that don’t match the reality of what actually happens at a school. He was called out for that attempt by a parent.
But, that’s not all.
Kevin was called out by a student for his continued attempts to mislead and deceive everyone he talks to about how the HS GT program is similar to “the other 15 GT programs in the District” with regard to services, educational opportunities and support when it isn’t. The student told Carroll that the elementary and middle school GT programs he attended were just advanced learning programs, and that the high school GT program was the first time he had ever experienced social-emotional support and the autonomous learner model.
Kevin even upset my meek and mild-mannered “on-the-spectrum” daughter, who also has ADHD, with his comment that money earmarked for the high school GT program might be better spent on students “who have real needs.” Really, Kevin? And you oversee the GT program? And Special Education? Do you understand who is in the GT program and what it does? Do you not realize that with their high probability of co-morbid developmental and mental health challenges, and with their different way of thinking and feeling, gifted students have “real needs” as legitimate as those of special education students? He should be fired for incompetence for that comment.
Kevin was told straight up by one parent that he wasn’t trusted, nor was the District. After his presentation, it was easy to see why.
Another parent asked why, if the program is such a success, the District would seek to pull money from it instead of investing more into it like a successful business would. No answer to that question.
Kevin was also called out for making this presentation without including the school’s School Accountability Committee, and doing it at a time when the school essentially didn’t have a principal to refute his numbers. That felt pretty sneaky. I guess that’s one way to ensure only one side of the story gets told.
The parents and students at that meeting weren’t fooled by Kevin and his misleading, manipulative and deceptive SBB numbers, and trust me, they let him know that.
For him to go back and tell his boss that the meeting “went well” is just another in a long line of statements by Kevin Carroll that just aren’t true. We don’t need or want Cabinet members like Kevin in our District!
To put it simply – this meeting couldn’t have been much worse! And the high school GT community deserves better.