Embedded within Beth Heller’s recent article in the “News from Town Hall” (below) there is a seemingly purposeful misrepresentation of data, in support of the Democrats, in an effort to gaslight the community with regard to the falling academic rankings of Amity Regional High School.
Here is Beth’s statement: "Good news from Amity! In recent Niche data Amity scored an A in academics (only eight schools, seven of them from Fairfield County, scored a higher grade of A+). " Actually nine schools earned an A+ in academics. Eight of them are from Fairfield County. So yes, the typical suspects from Fairfield County topped the list. However, there were twenty schools that earned an “A” grade including Amity. Although it is implied that Amity might be in 9th place or so but actually Amity ranked 13th on the list of “A” graded schools and well below the "A+" group. Amity fell behind Daniel Hand, Guilford, East Lyme and Cheshire in our local area, and a host of schools in the Hartford area (Conard, Avon, Glastonbury, Farmington, Hall and Simsbury). Further… administrations are graded as well as the well-highlighted Academic ranking. Amity administration squeaked out a “C” grade. For perspective, you need to look down the Niche list to #50 in the overall ranking to find a lower ranked administration (Litchfield "C-" with only 231 students). In the top 100 public high schools in the State of Connecticut, there are only four school administrations rated lower than AMITY. This is outrageous! This in and of itself explains the lower overall ranking of Amity; not COVID and old data excuses.
More of Beth’s comments: "Amity’s student newspaper, The Trident, was selected for the 1st place award for schools of between 1,000-1,700 students in the American Scholastic Press Association’s annual student newspaper competition. This is the second year in a row that The Trident was the 1st place winner. " Seriously, we are bragging about a high school newspaper? The key here is in the teacher-advisor leadership and the excellence dedicated teachers have instilled. This was never in question and has no bearing on the problem at hand – sinking academic rankings. Distract, distract, distract.
"And 27 out of 315 (nearly 9%) of seniors were recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Competition as Semi-Finalists or Commended Scholars!" Okay, this says that Amity has at least 27 phenomenally intelligent students – we expect nothing less given the gene pool in the Amity community. By the way, those individuals would be phenomenally intelligent, completely independent of the Amity Board of Education. Bottom line for Woodbridge voters: Local Democrats are “circling the wagons” for their candidates – even going so far to put it in the News from Town Hall - by cherry-picking data, that when looked at objectively, clearly demonstrates Amity’s academic performance is sinking. Woodbridge Republicans have endorsed two Amity BOE candidate based on their credentials and commitment to bring the schools performance back to our standards. Performance, not party politics, should be the driving force in electing Board of Education candidates.