Baccalaureate Program is not good value for schools

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Editor, The Citizen: Families and companies all around the country are cutting expenses in these tough economic times. Surprisingly, many state governments are doing the same. I guess they figured out that spending like there's no tomorrow gets us in a financial mess.

I'm wondering if our local school district will be doing the same.

Taxes have increased dramatically in Bedford and now many residents are cutting their expenses. It would only be reasonable for our school district to do the same.

Next year Bedford implements a new program in the high school called The International Baccalaureate Program. This program comes at an extremely high cost to the tax payers and may benefit a small number of students.

Some schools report an annual expenditure of over $100,000 for this program while other schools have reported over $500,000 as their annual expense which includes hiring additional staff like an IB Coordinator.

The Bow school district is considering this program right now, and hosted a meeting with the parents and taxpayers to determine whether or not they should go forward and adopt the program. The community was invited and many expressed genuine concerns on whether or not this program was a good idea for the students given it's high cost and controversial political nature.

The Concord Monitor reported in April that Bow had suspended the application after hearing from the "outraged" community.

At www.Cherryhill.com under the article titled: Debate Heats Up, the Superintendent is recommending phasing out the expensive program. Their annual expense is over $500,000.00 per year. The article goes on to report only 19% of the residents support it.

In an article titled: "Broughton's IB program to end soon", the Wake County School district in North Carolina voted to also phase out the $500,000 plus program citing they could offer a quality education without the extravagant price tag.

While this program is sold as one that adds rigor to the curriculum, there are other ways that this can be done without this excessive expense. Many private and public schools do this everyday.

A good alternative would be the AP International Diploma where there are NO additional charges. The only cost associated would be the cost of the 5 exams the students take. There are no student registration fees, no school membership fees, and no mandatory AP Coordinator. The only condition is that an American student makes application to at least one foreign university to obtain the APID certificate.

The APID is a globally recognized certificate for students with an international outlook without the controversial political agenda or the extravagant price tag. The APID challenges a student to display exceptional achievement on AP exams across several disciplines.

The Bow Superintendent calling together the community to openly discuss the merits and disadvantages of this program was a great way of getting feedback from those who have children in the school and those who pay the bills. I hope Bedford will take this under consideration when looking at the budget and the current economic situation.

Schools both in NH and out of state are re-examining this program based on cost and parental concerns over the content. It seems reasonable that Bedford Administrators do the same.

Ann Marie Banfield

Bedford

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