At Save Our Schools, we are fighting for educational quality, rights, and justice for all students. We believe in each other and support each other. We are advocating for the district to rebuild Sandusky in a fiscally responsible manner, to expand pre-k in the city through T. C. Miller, and to see the significance a magnet school has on improving equity in the city. We celebrate all wins in this fight. Our unity comes in the form of support and ground level work to support the children.
Most of all, we believe the city’s decisions will impact our most vulnerable population of Black, brown, and low-income students. These students will be displaced from schools that give them stability, disrupted in their learning, and forced into overcrowded and underfunded classrooms. They remain our priority.
Vision: Lynchburg City Schools can take steps to re-envision our school system in a way that provides the highest quality education to all students. These thriving schools should be a part of the picture. We can not create success, opportunities, and equity with destruction and harm to students.
T. C. Miller Hybrid Option: One strongly supported step is taking T. C. Miller and creating a hybrid school that includes preschool through fifth grade. Doing so solves two problems at once: capacity (we could increase by 40+ students) and preschool goals. Our tight-knit, small school culture and incredible programs are the perfect environment to welcome our littlest learners into the world of education – something education ‘stakeholders’ can truly celebrate.
Rebuild Sandusky: Another step is to get City Council buy-in for the Sandusky capital improvements. Our members have found ways to rebuild the school at a lower cost. Since members have stated their support for this and our community supports this, invest in our students and their education. If the school board can unite with families to present this project as a priority, we can commit to these 400 students and the incredible educational environment SES creates.
Re-zoning: Rezoning should be done carefully, not in a rushed way, with consideration to diversity and funding trends for marginalized students when resegregation occurs. The board needs to create a plan to equitably fund and provide programs at at-risk schools that address disparities between race and economics and background. In the meantime, keep TCM and Sandusky open, pull more families into the system, and grow our preschool program.
We can do this. We want high-quality educational experiences for all. We want to retain our teachers and the families who don’t trust LCS currently. We want to support our Black, brown, and low-income students who so frequently get the short end of the stick.
Keep T. C. Miller and Sandusky open. Invest in public education. We will keep working, helping, and fighting for our students.