LETTERS: Senior parking spots at Santa Rosa High

<p class="bold allcaps">A tradition lost</p> <p>EDITOR: For three years, I was able to experience Santa Rosa High in all its glory, through tradition. My senior year our beloved principal, Tony Negri, retired, and Jim Goddard took his place, changing the school forever.</p><p>Tradition is an enormous part of Santa Rosa’s history, and I saw it crumble right before my eyes. When I was a freshman, I dreamed of the day I got a senior spot in the parking lot and was able to paint my name on it. That did not happen the way any of my classmates planned. We, too, had the dream of a senior spot taken away. Who was behind it all? The same man you read about in the headlines of Tuesday’s paper.</p><p>Those spots are used as a fundraiser for the senior class and should be sold first-come, first-serve. There was no problems for years doing it that way. Why change it? I am so saddened to read about my high school being destroyed by this man. My heart goes out to all future Panthers.</p><p>JULIA MATTERN</p><p><MC>Santa Rosa</p><h3>Punishing kids</h3> <p>EDITOR: I’m disappointed in Santa Rosa High principal Jim for the way he is rewarding seniors with improved/good STAR test results. Certainly these students are to be congratulated for their efforts, but they are already rewarded in other ways. They are not pulled out to be in “special” classes, specifically to improve their STAR scores. I have two children with horrible test anxiety, and their STAR scores reflect this.</p><p>However, they both get As and Bs on their report cards because of their hard work and desire to succeed.</p><p>It’s hard enough to teach the value of being different to teenagers, and it’s discouraging to hear Goddard reward the status quo. It’s another slap in the face to kids who may already be convinced they’re not going to succeed. My child’s STAR results may not change much, but she will have worked just as hard as those who do.</p><p>To take away a much coveted senior reward is not fair and reinforces negative beliefs she may already have about herself. I think there are other ways STAR scores could be rewarded without taking away something from the rest of the hardworking students.</p><p>SHELLEY FITCH</p><p><MC>Santa Rosa</p><h3>Work’s rewards</h3> <p>EDITOR: I want to congratulate Santa Rosa High principal Jim Goddard and defend his position on the student parking fiasco which has so many parents and students upset. It is mind-boggling that the seniors are equating trying harder on a test to a selfish, materialistic reward. What happened to studying and hard work being a reward in itself?</p><p>During the four years that I attended Santa Rosa High, there never were senior spots. Parking was first-come, first-served. If we wanted a closer spot, we had to get there early. If not, we had to walk an extra few hundred feet. I wonder why these seniors assume they deserve priority parking when it hasn’t always been that way.</p><p>I don’t believe that awarding parking spots for doing well on a test is discrimination, as some claim. Students should do the best they can on tests without knowing there will be a reward. The reward should be a sense of accomplishment, and all students have an equal opportunity to get that reward.</p><p>Perhaps if students had put as much effort into the standardized tests as they did in this argument, they would have been rewarded for their hard work by getting a spot.</p><p>LESLIE SLOAN</p><p><MC>Santa Rosa</p><h3>Excellent lesson</h3> <p>EDITOR: What a great idea it is to reward students who perform well on a test of their academic knowledge (“Tops on test get spots in lot,” Tuesday). OK, so they didn’t know there were rewards in the way of a parking space at the time they took the test. Now they do. Get over it. Discrimination? Hardly. A good lesson to learn at an early age that people who study and try to achieve something may do well in life? You can hang a star on that one.</p><p>MIKE OWEN</p><p>Santa Rosa</p><h3>Unfair parking plan</h3> <p>EDITOR: I don’t know whether Santa Rosa High is violating federal privacy laws by giving parking spaces as rewards to students who scored well on STAR tests, but I am fairly certain it is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. The policy not only rewards good students, it punishes student who have learning disabilities and cannot perform well on the STAR by denying them access to prime parking spaces.</p><p>The implication is that students who score well do so because they work harder or have some other quality of character superior to those students who did not score well. As such, not only are students with learning disabilities left out, so are students who have lower IQs or are socially or economically disadvantaged and students who may not have the study aids and supports of high performing student or are English language learners.</p><p>It is elitist at best and, at worst, is a symptom of the corruption in the public school system whereby schools are more concerned with standardized tests than they are with educating students.</p><p>It is outrageous that a public institution, surviving on my tax dollars, should set up a system whereby my child would not have access to a parking space, no matter how many hours she spends studying.</p><p>NICOLE ROCHELLE</p><p>Santa Rosa</p>