The board should take a number of proactive steps to protect students, parents and teachers:

1) Table approving any school calendars until administration has solved these conflicts to the satisfaction of the board.

2) Follow last year’s precedent and suspend the use of STAAR scores as a promotion standard for non state-required grades: 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th.

3) Bring the summer school schedule into the same official calendaring process as the regular school year so that conflicts like this have greater transparency and receive the same public input.

4) Guarantee that all teachers necessary to a student’s grade placement and accelerated instruction planning are available and compensated for participating in GPC meetings.

If student success and school accountability are important to this board, then students, teachers and parents need to know that trustees are putting the policies and tools in place not to just give assessments but to also appropriately respond to their results.