As General George S. Patton quoted back in 1944, “If everyone is thinking alike, then someone is not thinking.”

This is so true with regards to the Federal Way School District. In reading the recent article regarding the merits of the new academic policy affecting the International Bacalaureate program, the direction that the school district is heading into clearly reflects the lack of thinking by the higher echelon within the district.

It was bad enough that the district chose to let all students walk and participate in formal graduation ceremonies, even when some students did not have the required credits to graduate. That alone was lowering the bar. Then, the elimination of required and assigned homework by all students.  Not only did that lower the bar again, but how in the world are the students going to be prepared for regularly scheduled homework at the college/university level?

The Federal Way School District is making a mockery out of higher education. Thomas Jefferson High School is now a product of the lack of institutional academia control brought on by misguided decision makers at the district level, with a total lack of regard to many years of commitment by the teachers and staff at TJ. The fact that the good students are being punished by lowering the educational bar so that the misfits and troublemakers can make a mockery of what graduating from high school means, and its effect on one’s self, clearly reflects a lack of discipline from within the superintendent’s office.

No one ever said that educating students was ever going to be easy, let alone fun. The time and sacrifice that the teachers, staff personnel and others at TJ are putting in, need to be recognized and be heard so that the problems can be quickly and permanently resolved.

By being all things to all people, and embracing the warm and fuzzy feeling that the school district so dearly wants at such a crucial time in our society, is not what the parents and students at TJ need going into the 2011/2012 school year. The lack of leadership, which is going to have an enormous negative effect on the next senior class for 2012, should be begging the question: Where will it come from?

According to Patton: “Lead me, follow me or get out of my way”

Patrick Wilson, Federal Way