Nickers in a knot about a meeting at Peabody without many participants

The Principal at Peabody and Rick F. of the Bloomfield Garfield Corp, as well as others around town, have their nickers in a knot concerning a public meeting slated for 1 pm on Friday, May 4. at Peabody High School. The pow-wow is to talk about the planning for a larger community meeting about schools. Not many are signed up to attend. I think there is a planning meeting on May 4 and a big meeting slated for May 12th. I could be wrong.

Here at the University of Canterbury, students wanted to know if they should get their nickers in a knot about a pending quiz today in the course my wife is teaching.

I've posted two email follow-ups below that hope to drive more community members and parents to the meeting.

My angle of attack for Peabody and Westinghouse, to benefit the entire city and region, would be to kick-start a discussion to make both schools single gender. Pittsburgh should have an all boys public high school -- and an all girls public high school. Take one campus, either Peabody or Westinghouse, and devote it to one gender and, of course, the other to the other gender.

When I've talked about this in the past, the strong feeling from some is that the time to turn to same gender education should not be at 9th grade -- but sooner. Many have told me that they would like to see the single gender campus open for those in middle school as well as high school.

If the "excellence for all" had some 'red meat' visible -- such as a push to single gender schools -- then there would be standing only attendance at the meetings, perhaps.

Here is what they posted: R. Flanigan:

WE CAN SUCCEED--ALL WE NEED TO DO IS WORK HARD AT IT...

We agreed to hold ourselves accountable for turnout for the Excellence For All: East End Community Building Event. We agreed at out last planning meeting that we would have 200 registered by the May 4th (Friday) final planning meeting that begins at 1 p.m. at Peabody High School. The 200 number was not to include Peabody students.

If you take out the Peabody students we have about 60 people registered.

Few registrations have come in from the "Planning Agencies" that comprise the leadership group conducting the event. Are you registered?

All of us need to spend some quality time--lots of it--or we are going to fail.

RECRUITMENT IDEAS: (Personal Invites Are Critical)

1) Attached is a letter that you can change to meet your needs. Send the letter and brochure out to a targeted group you would like to recruit. Call everyone you send the letter to. Register the people that commit.

2) Take these same materials and email them out to as many people as you can.

3) Meet at my office (Youth Development Center, 5129 Penn Avenue) at 9 a.m. on this coming Saturday in order conduct door to door pass out of the brochure.

4) Have all your staff register and Board of Directors register.

5) Call all your program participants. Get their approval to register them.

6) Call everyone you know that could benefit by this event. Register them.....

PLEASE RECRUITMENT-- NO EXCUSES--WE NEED 500 PEOPLE AT THIS EVENT...

See you Friday.

Rick Flanagan (cell phone cut by blogmaster)

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The next letter came from the Principal at Peabody:

Hello Valued Community Partners:

The 12th is almost upon us! We are progressing nicely. The only thing missing are participant registrations. I'm confident that with your help, we will meet our goal of 200 participants for tomorrow.

As you know, the final planning meeting is scheduled for tomorrow, May 4, at 1:00 P.M. here, at Peabody. We will devote much of our time to turn-out and last minute details and expectations of participating organizations. We will have all the procedures in place for drop-off and set-up of materials. Additionally, Breakout Rooms and procedures will be provided so everyone knows exactly what needs to be done.

We will be working feverishly at the school today and Saturday, calling the homes of all our students. Additionally, three of our office staff will be making an East End Business Blitz on Friday to garner last minute donations. Please call the school if you wish to join us.

Cle Sloan is scheduled to be on WAMO at 10:00 A.M. on Friday, May 11, 2007. Please tune in. We also have another addition to our program - the Frick Middle School Steel Band scheduled to perform during the 8-9:00 A.M. registration period. They will provide us with light background music in the gym prior to the 9:00 Kick Off.

Mr. Flanagan has also sent out emails detailing strategies that have been proven successful for recruitment. Please take advantage of this advice. Let's make this a truly memorable Event because of the excellent turn-out, not a disappointment because we had a wonderful program but limited participation. WE NEED YOUR HELP!

John Vater, Principal, Peabody High School

515 North Highland Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15206
email: jvater1@pghboe.net
phone: (412) 665-2050
fax: (412) 665-2077

Let me know what's going on. And, most of all, let me know what they think about two single-gender schools in Pittsburgh's mix of schools.

Central Catholic and Oakland Catholic do well, it seems to me. How about if we had public-school options to match those Catholic schools.