Tearful mom tells lawmakers of cuts in her kids’ school, problems with online class

Lauren Peters, a mom from Hansen, broke into tears as she began addressing lawmakers. “Our children lost out,” she said. “Art, music … are entirely gone. … This year my son will graduate, and for the first time, no band will play Pomp and Circumstance as he makes his way to the stage.” She said the library was another casualty of budget cuts at her kids’ school, so she’s been volunteering every day. “I understand that money is tight, but when I heard Mr. Luna’s plan to decrease the number of teachers and replace them with online classes, I had to come share my experience with you.”

She said at her kids’ school, four students enrolled in an online class through the IDLA, but struggled, and found that “the instructor responded to questions by telling students to try this or that website rather than answering them herself.” Two of the students dropped the class, she said, and the other two passed only with the help of extensive tutoring by a teacher at the school. “If highly motivated, capable students had this much trouble with online learning and had a 50 percent dropout rate, I shudder to think” how others will do, she said. “And I don’t think an online band is going to play for their graduation.”