Hernando: Parents say school failed to teach kids

Parents say school failed to teach kids

Families of three Hernando Christian students describe a fourth grade in chaos. Administrators say the parents are way off base.

By ROBERT KING

SPRING HILL -- At West Hernando Christian School, people have sought guidance this year from disparate sources.

At times, parents and school officials have exchanged written prayers seeking God's help in working out their yearlong dispute over problems in the school's fourth-grade classroom.

At other times, the factions have sought help from a less divine source: the legal profession. Parents, frustrated by what they say was a "horrendous" learning environment, have considered hiring a lawyer to seek reimbursement for the school's $2,300 annual tuition.

Meanwhile, school officials drafted a cease and desist order for one of the parents who they say has been making slanderous comments about a school administrator. Things have gotten so dicey that principal Cheryl McCluskey referred questions about the situation to a school attorney.

On both sides, there is disgust and disappointment that things have come to this.

Parent Freeland Hollowell Jr. said he has been pleading with the school for help. At one point he asked them: "What the hell is going on here? Why is this happening?"

Board of trustees chairman Phil Esposito said the complaining parents are way off base and not representative of the school's family as a whole. "I really don't take stock in anything they say," Esposito said.

The genesis of the dispute lies somewhere in the fourth-grade classroom of teacher Gale Amesbury. With just 13 students, it must have seemed like an ideal classroom setting when the year began. Parents of three of the 13 students say it turned out to be a disaster.

They contend that Amesbury allowed one disruptive student and a couple of his collaborators to keep the class in chaos. They say things were so bad the class failed to complete a year's worth of schoolwork, and parents were given textbooks to take home during the summer to finish the job themselves.

"I'm just not sure she learned anything because of the distractions," Hollowell said about his daughter, Adrianna, a student in Amesbury's class. "Distractions that weren't handled. Distractions that were ignored."

Joanne Gousse, a special education teacher in Hernando's public schools, said her daughter, Lauren, took an academic nose dive this year. Worried, Mrs. Gousse had her daughter's achievement test results analyzed by a school psychologist. She was told that the scores, including a 30 percent drop in several areas, was evidence of a total breakdown in Lauren's education. In short, her daughter was regressing.

Darlene Lord said troublemakers in the class picked on her daughter, Mekaella, relentlessly, that the disruptions were such that only half the curriculum was covered and that, when she questioned Amesbury about the upheaval, the teacher told her: "You have to tune it out."

"I wish I'd never heard of West Hernando Christian School," Lord said, before lamenting the change in her daughter's attitude toward school at year's end. "She was not the vivacious, happy, chatty little thing that she was," Lord said.

Amesbury, 38, admits that her classroom was not perfect. But she said the parents have blown things out of proportion.

"It was a very challenging year with discipline and special needs," Amesbury said. "But I do feel the children learned a lot."

Amesbury, who will not be returning in the fall because she's about to have a baby, acknowledged there were "one or two things that we didn't get to" as far as the curriculum goes. But she said the situation was not nearly as grave as the parents portray it.

Vonda Pendlebury, a volunteer member of the West Hernando School Board, said she observed Amesbury's class for a week after the parents began complaining. If any students were making trouble, Pendlebury said, it was the children of the parents who have been making the complaints. But she saw nothing other than typical fourth-grade antics.

"To me, it seemed like (Amesbury) had control of the class," Pendlebury said.

Whatever the problems inside the classroom, what was going on outside seemed to grow uglier as the year wore on.

For months, the parents say, they were told the problem was being addressed. But the classroom situation only deteriorated. Frustrated by what they considered the school's inaction, the parents approached the School Board. Still, nothing improved.

Some asked for a partial tuition refund or threatened to stop tuition payments.

"That's when all hell broke loose," Mrs. Gousse said. No refunds were given.

All three families -- the Hollowells, the Gousses and the Lords -- say their kids will not go back to West Hernando Christian next year. Parents in each family say they feel guilty for not pulling their children out before this school year evaporated.

"I think you want to believe in everybody. But I think you want to believe more in people who stand behind the cross and the Bible," Mrs. Lord said. "You don't look as soon as you would" otherwise.

Giving up on the school was harder for the Hollowells and the Gousses, who say they have had good experiences in previous years at the school. Even this year, younger siblings in lower grade levels have thrived. They hoped for such results in the fourth-grade class.

School Board chairman Esposito said the school took "appropriate corrective action" and things improved. He said the parents are trying to damage the school because they were not granted a refund.

"You can't allow your child to go for the whole year and then say that you didn't get anything," Esposito said. "I suppose they are being very unreasonable and just trying to bring the school down for something that was taken care of."

One lesson the parents say they have learned about private schools is to question the school's credentials and the qualifications of its teachers. "If you are looking at putting your kids there," Gousse said, "you better do your homework."

West Hernando is not accredited by any outside authority, and its teachers are not required to be certified by the state or even have a four-year college degree. Amesbury, in her first year as a full-time teacher, is not state certified.

Still, school officials say some things are more important that what an outside agency says. They consider a teacher's experience, his or her commitment to Christian values and a love of children more valuable than a certificate from the state.

In a written statement released Friday, Esposito said it was never the school's desire to make this a media battle, even though these parents "choose to maliciously damage our school." He said one child's achievement test scores do not reflect what's going on in the school as a whole.

His statement concluded in the tone reminiscent of the earlier God-focused correspondence between the school and its parents with a reference to the book of Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 28. It reads: "All things work together for good to them who love God."