Special Board of Aldermen Public Hearing Page 43
spend about 20 minutes on the playground — actually it was the night of Mayor Donchess’ Ward 5
meeting. When my wife returned home with my girls, she put them to be. She received a text
message from a friend saying that they had just removed 7 ticks and to check the girls. My wife did.
One was missed and my youngest had to be taken to the doctor the next day to have a tick that had
embedded itself into her neck out. Tragedy averted. She had expressed concerned — now again we
don’t go to Main Dunstable. We don’t know who the people are. So my suggest to her was to start at
the SAU office. She called the next morning, got a receptionist who pretty much told her not our
problem. “Not our problem” was her words. So | have a problem with that because we’re spending
money on opioid appropriately so. It’s a public safety issue. This is a known risk. | have parents
from that same school telling me that they can’t get the lawn mowed — ticks coming in from the woods
are in the long grass. These children are out there every day at recess. You have high school
students that are taking walks out in Mine Falls. Class lead walks out into Mine Falls with no
notification to parents. No bug spray applied. | think that we can do a better job and, again, | just
figured while | had the mike in front of me I’d mention it but | will be at the board meeting on Monday
for that as well. Thank you.
Fred Teeboom
Back to kindergarten since that came up. The cost of this full time kindergarten in these other
schools is about $1 million. That kindergarten question in the School Board that somebody brought
up should have been discussion never went to the School Instruction Committee. It was only debated
at board level. Now certainly not a unanimous vote to take kindergarten full time. | appeared before
the Board of Education twice and | read them studies that said full time kindergarten doesn’t pay.
You don’t get the benefits you claim you get. Lots of children cannot sit at that young an age ina
structured environment for 7 hours. If you want to teach them math by the 3" grade or whatever, the
objective | heard that means that you have to start teaching them a structured set of coursed in a
structured environment and that means the kids are not out running around. They’re not playing.
Kids that young should be playing around, running around, experience no structure at all. In actual
studies and | quote it “studies” that said that and have proven that. At the same time as no one has
ever proven the study that past the third grade was there any benefit. They've shown a
disadvantageous effect structuring these kids too early for too long a time and no real benefit by past
third grade. You have spending like some million. By the way the reason that five schools have
kindergarten because part of that is the special education stuff. It's a program requirement for the
kids. It’s not totally voluntary.
Now one gentleman come up and says all the things that are happening now that didn’t happen in the
past. I’m old enough to know what happened in the past. When! came to this country, there was no
special education. | came to this country and | spoke barely any English. Maybe you could say |
don’t speak any English still but | could barely speak any English. There was no ESL. There were no
teachers teaching you foreign languages or transitioning you. | spoke broken Spanish and a kid
came from a school in Columbia and they put him in a classroom in a desk behind me so | could
translate English to my broken English to his Spanish from my broken Spanish. A funny thing
happened. We both entered that school in 10" grade around November. We graduated in June.
Both the Spanish kid and | spoke fluent English. Kids learn. They don’t need ESL teachers. They
don’t need any of that stuff. So somebody says oh we have all these problems now that we didn’t
have in the past. We had the same problems in the past as we have now. We just created a whole
culture what | call a “victimizing culture”. Everybody is a victim.
Special education — 1 out of 5 kids today in the Nashua School District is coded special education.
About 18 or 19 percent. Ten years ago, the number was 12 percent. What happened the kids are
getting dumber? No we ask the psychologist and they say oh we have better ways of measuring.
Just look at autism. We now can measure autistic kids. We couldn’t measure them before.
Bologna.
