IB at Indian Trail: Will It Stay or Will It Go?

The will decide whether  should be an International Baccalaureate World School .

Here's Superintendent Russ Jones' recommendation as it appears on the agenda:

"I wish to recommend that the Board of Education direct the Superintendent to take the steps necessary to obtain International Baccalaureate World School status for Indian Trail Elementary School and not pursue such status at any other school in the district at this time."

(The full agenda is attached to this post as a PDF document.)

Indian Trail is a candidate to become an IB school. The superintendent's recommendation is on tonight's agenda following discussion during the Jan. 12 special board meeting. At that meeting, the board approved a resolution to send four Indian Trail teachers to Westlake in March for IB training, at a cost of $3,200. 

The program has met with strong resistance from a group whose members say it wastes money that could be used in other professional development areas or disagree with the program's international aspects. One mother even said her son has .

Some of the board members aren't completely convinced the program is needed either.

"We need to decide the long-term of IB: do we discontinue IB in the district, or do you leave it at Indian Trail and re-evaluate it?" board member Fred Bonacci said during the Jan. 12 meeting. "I'm not convinced yet whether we should shut it down at Indian Trail ... but we should not spend money [on IB training] elsewhere until the board reaches a decision."

Tonight the board will decide if Indian Trail will continue to pursue the IB program. The board's decision will take effect immediately.

With five board members, a resolution needs three votes to pass.

If the board decided not to pursue IB all together, then the instructional approach, not the curriculum, would change at Indian Trail, said Jones.

"Our curriculum is determined by the state standards that every district is required to follow," he said.

Right now, Jones said the instruction approach under IB "encourages kids to be critical thinkers and develop deeper understanding of the material they are studying. In addition, IB encourages children to make connections between disciplines in an effort to get them to realize that those disciplines do not exist in isolation in the real world but rather fit together and are interrelated."

To find out if IB will be a status school at Indian Trail, check Stow Patch tonight after the meeting at 7 p.m. at the.