As the Thanksgiving holiday approaches, I remember fondly all the costumes, turkey drawings, Pilgrim hats and headdresses I made while in elementary school. There was such excitement that a special day was coming where we honored our history and got two days off from school. My love of history was planted deeply as we studied those early colonists and the Native Americans who helped them survive. While that original Thanksgiving wasn’t repeated for many years, one aspect of our early New England settlers that did survive was the respect for education. Only fifteen years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, the first public school was founded in Boston (Boston Latin). All New England towns…
Today’s blog entry has been written by Jeanne Jehl, the president of the Parents for Public Schools Board of Directors. Jehl has been an assistant to the superintendent in the San Diego City Schools. She directed a study of school-linked services at the U.S. Department of Education, and promoted federal-state partnerships to strengthen families with the White House Domestic Policy Council. As an independent consultant, she has worked with the Coalition for Community Schools, the Collaborative Communications Group, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Jeanne and her husband, Joseph, live in Annapolis, Maryland. The recent buzz over “XQ: The…
As we launch our new Parents for Public Schools website, I am reminded that our PPS mission of advancing the role of families and communities in securing a high quality education for every child is more important than ever. Public schools are a unique part of our democracy. When the first settlers in New England founded their communities they were required to build a church, a public meeting place and a school. Public schools emerged as a way to support a democratic society. We can debate whether the quality or inclusiveness of our schools were fair but we know that…