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The Berkeley Public Schools NEVER received a “Report Card” from a State Agency but a report on how we can continue to improve our schools. Either the reporter or headline writer for the Berkeley Daily Planet did not attend the meeting where this report was presented to the School Board, or they purposely are trying to inflame our community against our public schools. 

The School Board meeting on August 13 started with an introduction from one of the leaders of the State agency, FCMAT, explaining the purpose and value of their report. The Daily Planet, in it’s article about this meeting, even quoted FCMAT leader Joel Montero, when he “stressed that the report’s findings do not constitute ‘ a report card’ on the district,” thus contradicting the headline for the article that was written in the Weekend Edition, Aug. 15-18, 2003. 

Mr. Montero went on to say that there are many positive, exciting, and good things the Berkeley Schools are doing and that the purpose of the report was not to document these things but to analyze those things that we think still need attention. This School Board, and community, in turn, welcomes all the help we can get to continue to improve our schools. The operative description of FCMAT’s two year stay in Berkeley is “to help us continue to improve.” We all know we can do a better job educating ALL students, but so can every school district in this State. We all know that Berkeley needs to improve the operational and fiscal aspects of our system, and we have been working on this for the past two years, and with the help of the analysis given to us by FCMAT we will be improving that much faster. 

The bottom line is to improve the educational program for children. FCMAT, the community, the school system, and, in my opinion the school board, are 

working together towards this end and this was completely missed by the Berkeley Daily Planet in its weekend Edition of Aug. 15-18. 

Terry Doran is a Berkeley Unified School District Board Member.