Submitted by Franny Bittman, English and AVID teacher, English Program Assistant, and 2025 Distinguished Teacher
Open letter to the Greenwich Board of Education
I am a resident in Greenwich, a parent of a GHS freshman, and a teacher at Greenwich High School. Watching Thursday’s meeting made it clear that neither the Board nor Dr. Jones understands how Greenwich High School functions, as you are all dismantling the infrastructure in place to help teachers, support staff and administrators ensure student success and well-being.
I would like you to re-vote on the removal of the Learning Facilitators. I just want to remind you about what was previously removed from GHS: house administrators were combined with department heads (putting more demands on the deans and giving them less time for department issues), learning center aids were cut (meaning less student support and for the English department, all books now were distributed, exchanged, collected and recorded by the English LFs) and coaches were cut (which means the mentoring jobs also fell to the LFs). The Learning Facilitators on a daily basis print sub plans, greet substitutes and set them up in the classrooms, find coverage when no substitutes are available, sub for those classes when no coverage can be found, help colleagues when any issues arise about lessons or classroom management, disseminate information about the English department and upcoming events, distribute/return within their house and to other houses texts for classroom teachers, order supplies, unpack supplies, distribute supplies, meet one or twice weekly to plan everything from English award ceremonies to upcoming department meetings to schedules for next year, meet before the school year starts and after the school year ends to plan for department needs and professional development, and meet monthly with all the LFs from all the departments to discuss and address school-wide issues. I cannot imagine what next year will look like without LFs. It will be horrific.
ONE job at Havemeyer (or $162,464 from professional development or from unnecessary consultants) would save ALL of the Learning Facilitator jobs from middle through high school. PLEASE reopen this discussion with some actual information about what we do and the detrimental effects it will have without learning facilitators in the middle and high schools.
Second, restructuring the house based system would be destructive to GHS. Please talk to Ralph Mayo or Dana Tulotta. The houses are in place to help students feel less lost in such a large place. Each house has a student’s counselor, support staff (social worker/psychologist), and dean and assistant dean (who does everything from run PPTs to meet with students over disciplinary issues to make home visits to students struggling with attendance issues).
In addition, each house also has a study hall for the freshmen, so they have their actual teachers to help them on their work, and for students with IEPs, they have their special education teachers in their academic labs in their houses. This gives all students a home base. The idea that the houses could be restructured by grade is ridiculous. Can you imagine the three counselors who would have the 12th grade and would have to write ALL those college recommendations? How good would those recommendations be? How effective could three counselors be in guiding ALL those students through the college process? That is an absurd task and would have terribly adverse effects on the college process and students’ admissions. By changing the start time to 7:30, this could be avoided entirely. Please don’t even consider a plan without any knowledge, when what is in place is able to accommodate all our students’ many, many needs.
Thank you for taking the time to listen. Please reach out to the administrators and teachers at the high school if you need any more information. We want to make sure GHS is a place that continues to do the absolute best within our means for our students.
Thank you,
Franny Bittman, English and AVID teacher, English Program Assistant, and 2025 Distinguished Teacher