Superintendent Dr. Kay Novotny and School Board Fail East Allen County Schools Students Again

Students in East Allen Schools are quite atone to the fact that East Allen County Schools believes in hiding the fact that there are problems within its school system. Woodlan Junior-Senior High School journalism students found this out when they published an article about intolerance toward its gay students.

In November, 2007 after racial tension at Heritage Junior-Senior High School, Dr. Novotny suggested that the tension at Heritage Junior-Senior High School could be addressed with an internal study circle group to keep the racial problems in house. But the overall failure of leadership of East Allen County Schools in addressing students problems have been identified by the Indiana Department of Education with its latest AYP.

The Indiana Department of Education announced that 10 of the 18 schools under Dr. Notvotny leadership and its school board has failed the annual yearly progress mandated by the federal government No Child Left Behind Act and Indiana Public Law 221.
That is more than half of the schools in East Allen School System, with a student body

Kelly Soderlund writes for the Journal-Gazette:

The changes came less than two weeks after the Indiana Department of Education announced results under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Ten of the 18 schools in EACS did not make adequate yearly progress under the law.

Two of those 18 failing schools,Village Elementary and Prince Chapman Junior High School contains a high number of African-Americans and Latinos students seeking a decent education have been reported three years in a row in need for improvement. Both East Allen County Schools are Title I schools. As failing Title I schools, students have the right to transfer to other schools, even outside of the East Allen County District or to receive tutoring assistance paid for by the school. But Dr. Novotny suggest the remedy to improve student performance rest solely on the principal. Bullcrappy. Dr. Novotny is playing a shell game with East Allen County students by shuffling of five principals to other schools. In other words, Dr. Notovny snorts that she is transferring smart principals to schools with BAD, SAD, or just plain MAD students rather than bringing academically strong teachers into the classrooms to benefit deserving students who are attending the failing schools.

Once again Dr. Novotny and the school board attempts to remove the power from the parents with their choice which undermines the NCLB accountability concerns of parents of African-American students and state and federal laws.

Once again, Dr. Novotny disregards for the African-American community show up just as it did when she arrogantly refused to work with the President of the Fort Wayne-Allen County NAACP. Instead Dr. Novotny in essence stated she had her hired Negros in which she controlled and did not have to deal with the concerns of African-American parents in the larger African-American community. Matter of fact, Dr. Novotny has failed to sit down with the Fort Wayne-Allen County NAACP to draft a plan to deal with the racial tension at some of the schools. Some of the same schools that some of these African-Americans could transfer which may cause more race tension to escalate within the school system.

But it not just the local NAACP that Dr. Novotny has put off, pending recommendations are still pending with the United States Department of Justice. Who does Dr. Novotny have to answer to when it comes to doing right by African-American parents and students?