On October 6th, 2022 at 6 pm the Board of Education started a meeting. In this meeting, most of the arguments were toward parents’ concerns in the classroom. There are a lot of mixed emotions about letting parents be more involved in their child’s learning.

“I sincerely hope the parents look at the assignments uploaded to Schoology and the papers their children bring home,” Eagleview Middle School 7th-grade teacher, Cynthia Jacquay, remarked. 

While some of the teachers would like to have parents in the classroom, other teachers have mixed emotions towards this idea, mostly centered around potential miscommunications in the classroom between the parents and teachers. 

“I do have concerns that when parents enter my classroom. They may not do so with the intent to partner with me, but to find fault in me instead,” Jacquay said. 

As a result of these certain conflicts, Jacquay presents a way the board as a community can help impact student learning. 

“The more closely we can partner with our entire community, beginning with the parents, the better we know how to best teach their children,’’ Jacquay remarked.

Even if bringing parents into the classroom can be a fantastic idea for parents to reconnect with their students, there are still some safety concerns due to recent school shootings and threats to the school community throughout the United States. This can be a huge safety risk according to some teachers and parents alike. Academy District 20 representative, Jackie Lesh, took to the stand and represented a teacher at Academy District 20 who remained anonymous.

“Do you really think it is wise to have people roaming around the school who might suddenly become upset?” Lesh asked. 

This is a huge safety risk to students as well as teachers because of the fact that there could be a parent with ill intentions and can put students, teachers, and fellow parents in danger as well. 

“I do not feel safe as part of the teaching staff. More importantly, you’re putting my children at risk as well because I’m also a parent,” Lesh stated.

The urgency to push the importance of safety increases as more speakers voice their concerns. With this, it could be difficult to keep track of hundreds of students and their parents because of this fact.  Furthermore, many teachers feel as if it compromises the safety of the schools in the district. While some parents could be parents of the students at the school, citizens could also claim to be parents of a student at the school when they are not. 

“There shouldn’t be random parents and citizens entering our academy buildings,” Piper Behan stated for another anonymous teacher.

 As a whole, there are many ways to be more involved in student learning without being in the physical building such as keeping up with the assignments posted on Schoology or talking to the student about the assignments. If the board chooses to allow parents into school atmospheres, it must be taken into consideration that it is a safety issue according to the parents and staff.