What School Board Members Are Saying About International Baccalaureate (IB)
July 7, 2011
These remarks are from “Beyond IB Puffery, a work in progress”, a compilation of news and blog articles, quotes, and commentaries about the International Baccalaureate program. (Used with permission. Emphasis added by compiler.)
=======================================================
[Connecticut] School Board Member Questions Action of Chairman
Letter to the Editor By Marianna Ponns Cohen [Board of Education member] | Greenwich Patch | Feb. 14, 2011
http://greenwich.patch.com/articles/school-board-member-questions-action-of-board-chairman
Introducing the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum to Greenwich middle schools and the High School is a critically important decision that must be decided only after careful Board of Education deliberation.
In 2008, before proceeding with IB at New Lebanon School, a committee was formed to evaluate all possible elementary school curriculum options and themes. This committee, after many meetings, reported to the Board, where public comment was given. Only then did the Board vote on IB implementation for this school. I voted for it as part of a racial balancing magnet solution.
To date, none of these legal and common sense requirements to safeguard the public interest have been followed with the significant expansion of IB into our secondary schools.
Only several weeks ago, after my requesting them of the Superintendent, did I see for the first time copies of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) agreements with the District for IB implementation at Western Middle School (WMS). At no prior point in time were these documents circulated to the entire Board.
I was shocked that the documents include representations to the IBO that the WMS principal, “was able to secure the approval from the Superintendent and the Board of Education to implement the IB Programme” at WMS. I never recollected the Board approving this implementation, so I reviewed Board minutes. My review makes very clear the Board protocol to approve “implementation of IB” at a given school. No such protocol has been followed here.
Yet Chairman [Steven] Anderson signed a March 2010 letter addressed to an IBO representative, stating that he (significantly, not “we”) “supported the implementation” of IB in the “Greenwich Public Schools. “Such letter was written on Board stationery, signed by Mr. Anderson as “Chairman of the Board.”
Mr. Anderson’s signing this Letter was a condition to the IBO even accepting the application of WMS to become an IB school. The IBO wants to know that the “governing body is explicitly supportive of the programme.”
While the Board did approve the 2010-2011 budget, which included IB professional training, it has never voted to approve implementation of IB curriculum in our secondary schools. There has been no Board meeting where there a discussion followed by public comment and a Board vote of: the alternatives considered, their relative pros and cons and feasibility, the implications of IB implementation or required current and future financial commitments.
Board Policy provides that the Chairperson can only sign “instruments … to carry out … the will of the Board.” To date, the “will of the Board” has never been determined and recorded to be “explicitly supportive of the IB programme” at any public meetings.
Did the Board Chairman and others exceed their authority by not first obtaining explicit Board approval in public view? Would any documents that were signed, as a consequence, be invalid? The Chairman’s role requires him to protect the Board’s prerogatives to approve significant changes in our schools.
I have very serious substantive reservations about the IB program. We cannot discuss the substantive IB issues, without first ensuring that due process has been followed, allowing for full information and discussion. In the absence of that, one can only draw negative inferences about how IB proponents believe the public is likely to react.
The Board of Education must be transparent and accountable to the public it serves. If the Board does not do so, we are failing in our most basic duty to protect the interests of those who have placed their trust in us.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Connecticut] IB Deserves a Full Debate in Greenwich
By Marianna Ponns Cohen, Greenwich Board of Education | The Daily Greenwich | Jan. 31, 2011
http://www.thedailygreenwich.com/opinion/ib-deserves-full-debate-greenwich
The major expansion of the International Baccalaureate program in Greenwich Public Schools being considered by the Board of Education will bring far-reaching changes and could create unintended consequences. So it is important that it stands up to full public disclosure, scrutiny and debate, and that it receives board approval before implementation.
Superintendent Sidney Freund is pushing for expansion of IB to Western Middle School and the ninth and 10th grades at Greenwich High School; he wants to expand IB into 11th and 12th grades shortly thereafter.
Yet Freund has repeatedly said a board vote on IB expansion isn’t necessary because IB is not a curriculum, but rather a “framework” of “international thinking.” But it is curriculum, even IB oversight rules say it is. Under Connecticut law, a board vote is required for curriculum.
In Greenwich, education, especially curriculum and instructional methodology, has largely been under local control, subject to certain federal and state mandates. With IB, the school board yields inordinate control over educational content and methodology by contract to the International Baccalaureate Organization, based in Switzerland.
Though the IB program at the elementary level is generally less intrusive, it becomes increasingly restrictive in the middle and high school years. Loss of educational control was not an issue because Greenwich’s IB experience was limited to Dundee, one of its 11 elementary schools.
At the middle and high school levels, the IBO requires that its strictly defined (and controversial) curriculum take precedence over any competing academic offerings. As a result, in other school districts, IB has squeezed out Advanced Placement courses. Yet colleges generally do not provide credits for IB as readily as they do for AP. And AP is less restrictive and not as costly.
The superintendent said publicly that the district is “several years away” from having a conversation about replacing AP with IB. It is the board’s prerogative to decide when to discuss issues that may affect the school district. This conversation cannot be postponed, so that IB replacing AP becomes a foregone conclusion because of overall IB spending in the current budget.
If IB will supplant AP, let us know that now. I need to consider the long-term implications of IB on the delivery of AP, Advanced Learning Programs and the entire district. Parents and the community would want these answers as well.
IB is expensive. For WMS alone, initial IB costs, putting aside significant ongoing costs, were $270,000. Would expanding IB to another school double those costs? The IBO also requires that districts employ IB curriculum coordinators at each school and ongoing IB professional training. For 2011-12, the superintendent has budgeted $165,000 in IB professional training, mainly for the high school. By 2012, 37 percent of Greenwich Public Schools certified workforce would be trained in IB. Shouldn’t the board and public know if the intent is to convert the entire district to IB?
We could invest millions in IB at the high school, only to graduate a small number (e.g., 30) of IB diploma high school students (of 2,800), as is common in many IB districts. Significant tax dollars would be spent to benefit a few, causing further inequities in per pupil expenditures in our school system. We should know more about other district’s experience with this program.
The IBO also requires IB Diploma students to take expensive tests (about $900 per student), which are graded at its sites, with the final grade in the IBO’s discretion. There is little to no local teacher input. Who will pay for such tests – the district or parents? These fees, expenses and costs make IB an increasingly expensive proposition that have caused some school districts to abandon it.
Once introduced, IB is difficult to remove because IBO Rules impose a poison pill. If a school district chooses to terminate IB, it still must pay fees to the IBO and provide IB teaching to IBO-registered students. The school district must give such students the “opportunity to obtain [IBO]-validated grades.” Also, when a district has discontinued IB at fully authorized IB schools (which neither Western Middle School nor New Lebanon are yet), expensive lawsuits have ensued. In a Pennsylvania school district, the ACLU sued on behalf of pro-IB parents to reinstate IB.
Finally, by signing up to IB, school districts must comply with any prospective changes to the rules governing IB programs, and Swiss law governs any contract between a school district and the IBO. As a consequence, the rules of the game can change, without an open meeting, public say, or a school board or Representative Town Meeting vote in Greenwich.
Is that what Greenwich wants? Does our school system need more controversial initiatives on the heels of Superintendent Betty Sternberg’s tenure and RISE? Rather than adopt an expensive prepackaged curriculum, perhaps the school district should develop its own new curriculum, such as in Scarsdale, N.Y., or improve its existing programs. We need to support student achievement wisely through a focus on the basics — core curriculum and better teaching.
Greenwich deserves a full debate, and needs to know what the implications are of adopting IB wholesale without further question. Nothing less.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Arizona] Comments made by Governing Board Member Diane Douglas
in opposition to continuation of IB Program in PUSD.
Peoria Unified School District #11 – Glendale, AZ; Governing Board Meeting Oct 14, 2010
Agenda Item 15-K – Consideration of reauthorization of the International Baccalaureate Program at Ironwood H.S.
I don’t think it is any secret that I am a huge proponent of school choice and educational options for all children. [. . . ] However, this is one program, one option to which I am vehemently opposed.
I could talk about the fact that, with the IB program, we, as the elected representatives of this community, are relinquishing our local control to an international organization – not just our own federal government but rather to an international organization; that the IB teaches how to “think about” Science and Math more so than how to DO Science and Math; that we have no real control over the curriculum and testing and that IB tests are sent all over the world for evaluating and grading; that the IB is an expensive program for the district and our families – more so than A/P. And all that bothers me but not so much as the goals and mission of the program itself.
I believe, as elected officials, responsible for the oversight of a public school system in the AMERICAN education system, our duty is to educate our students to be productive, well-educated AMERICAN citizens.
IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) – websites state IB is an “International System of Education.” IBO says its curriculum is “the best possible” because IB teaches the beliefs and values of the UN as defined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]. These are the rights recognized or “granted” by the United Nations – not the God given rights recognized in our Declaration of Independence and protected under our United States Constitution.
From page ix of Implementing the IB Diploma “The IBO is an independent organization unfettered by individual national demands.” The IB Program has a separate Governing Board. THIS Governing Board, elected to represent this community, gives up our local control over the curriculum and grading with this agreement. And I see that our board packet doesn’t include the contract – the terms and conditions to which we are agreeing – exactly what authority we are relinquishing.
The IB’s goal to advance global governance and promote world citizenship over U.S. citizenship is made very clear by the words of its directors. “International Baccalaureate school curriculum remains committed to changing children’s values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country’s viewpoint”, stated retired IB director-general George Walker.
The IB program doesn’t want to teach our children HOW to think but rather WHAT to think.
When Government, especially a “world government” as the United Nations envisions, becomes the grantor rather than the guarantor of rights then we are all in danger of losing our God given rights as American citizens. That is what the IB program and the United Nations would have us teach our children.
If our community’s goal is for us to take their best and brightest children and turn them against the greatest country on earth – the one that has brought more freedom and greater economic prosperity to our own citizens and others throughout the world – then we should vote to continue the IB program in PUSD. But I don’t believe that is what our community expects of this Governing Board. I believe they would have us be knowledgeable about and protect their children from such programs.
In my opinion, the International Baccalaureate program should have NO place in the AMERICAN education system. I believe that continuing this program is a breech of the oath of office each one of us swore upon taking our positions as members of this Governing Board that is – to support and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. I will vote “NO” to continuing this program.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Minnesota] “IB Costs and Curriculum” | Oct. 14, 2006
By Dave Eaton, former School Board Member, Minnetonka School District, Minnesota
http://www.edwatch.org/ppts/Eaton-IB-10-14-06.ppt
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Nebraska]
“. . . the International Baccalaureate program, or IB, appears to be in direct violation of Nebraska state law. The law requires curricular control by a locally-elected school board, adherence to Nebraska state standards of learning, parental control over a child’s education, and a pro-America civics orientation for any taxpayer-supported public school.
Members of a local school board who fail to fulfill the American civics requirements of Nebraska State Statute 79-724 (http://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=79-724) are guilty of a Class III misdemeanor. But the IB curriculum that is under consideration for Central and Lewis and Clark appears to ignore the provisions in the law that require the teaching of civics pertaining strictly to the United States and to the State of Nebraska.
— Susan Darst Williams, “Why OPS Should Reject International Baccalaureate Mini-Grants,” GoBigEd, June 2009, http://www.gobiged.com/wfdata/frame401-1044/pressrel6.asp
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[California]
“ For five months, those in our school district who opposed adopting the IBO curriculum openly and honestly shared information with our school staff and community. We attended every school board meeting and talked individually with board members.
The school board voted against the IB program by a 3-2 margin. However, the victory lasted only a few short days. Within 48 hours an emergency meeting of the board was held to reconsider the previous vote. This unprecedented move by our board president created a forum so she could change her vote.”
— Kristine K. Spadt, “The Spiritual Worldview of the International ,” Better Education, Fall 2005.
http://www.gtbe.org/news/index.php/1/22/186.html/ Or download pdf: http://hisways.org/PDFs/Intl-Baccalaureate-gtbe2005NL.pdf
These remarks are from “Beyond IB Puffery, a work in progress”, a compilation of news and blog articles, quotes, and commentaries about the International Baccalaureate program. (Used with permission. Emphasis added by compiler.)
=======================================================
[Connecticut] School Board Member Questions Action of Chairman
Letter to the Editor By Marianna Ponns Cohen [Board of Education member] | Greenwich Patch | Feb. 14, 2011
http://greenwich.patch.com/articles/school-board-member-questions-action-of-board-chairman
Introducing the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum to Greenwich middle schools and the High School is a critically important decision that must be decided only after careful Board of Education deliberation.
In 2008, before proceeding with IB at New Lebanon School, a committee was formed to evaluate all possible elementary school curriculum options and themes. This committee, after many meetings, reported to the Board, where public comment was given. Only then did the Board vote on IB implementation for this school. I voted for it as part of a racial balancing magnet solution.
To date, none of these legal and common sense requirements to safeguard the public interest have been followed with the significant expansion of IB into our secondary schools.
Only several weeks ago, after my requesting them of the Superintendent, did I see for the first time copies of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) agreements with the District for IB implementation at Western Middle School (WMS). At no prior point in time were these documents circulated to the entire Board.
I was shocked that the documents include representations to the IBO that the WMS principal, “was able to secure the approval from the Superintendent and the Board of Education to implement the IB Programme” at WMS. I never recollected the Board approving this implementation, so I reviewed Board minutes. My review makes very clear the Board protocol to approve “implementation of IB” at a given school. No such protocol has been followed here.
Yet Chairman [Steven] Anderson signed a March 2010 letter addressed to an IBO representative, stating that he (significantly, not “we”) “supported the implementation” of IB in the “Greenwich Public Schools. “Such letter was written on Board stationery, signed by Mr. Anderson as “Chairman of the Board.”
Mr. Anderson’s signing this Letter was a condition to the IBO even accepting the application of WMS to become an IB school. The IBO wants to know that the “governing body is explicitly supportive of the programme.”
While the Board did approve the 2010-2011 budget, which included IB professional training, it has never voted to approve implementation of IB curriculum in our secondary schools. There has been no Board meeting where there a discussion followed by public comment and a Board vote of: the alternatives considered, their relative pros and cons and feasibility, the implications of IB implementation or required current and future financial commitments.
Board Policy provides that the Chairperson can only sign “instruments … to carry out … the will of the Board.” To date, the “will of the Board” has never been determined and recorded to be “explicitly supportive of the IB programme” at any public meetings.
Did the Board Chairman and others exceed their authority by not first obtaining explicit Board approval in public view? Would any documents that were signed, as a consequence, be invalid? The Chairman’s role requires him to protect the Board’s prerogatives to approve significant changes in our schools.
I have very serious substantive reservations about the IB program. We cannot discuss the substantive IB issues, without first ensuring that due process has been followed, allowing for full information and discussion. In the absence of that, one can only draw negative inferences about how IB proponents believe the public is likely to react.
The Board of Education must be transparent and accountable to the public it serves. If the Board does not do so, we are failing in our most basic duty to protect the interests of those who have placed their trust in us.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Connecticut] IB Deserves a Full Debate in Greenwich
By Marianna Ponns Cohen, Greenwich Board of Education | The Daily Greenwich | Jan. 31, 2011
http://www.thedailygreenwich.com/opinion/ib-deserves-full-debate-greenwich
The major expansion of the International Baccalaureate program in Greenwich Public Schools being considered by the Board of Education will bring far-reaching changes and could create unintended consequences. So it is important that it stands up to full public disclosure, scrutiny and debate, and that it receives board approval before implementation.
Superintendent Sidney Freund is pushing for expansion of IB to Western Middle School and the ninth and 10th grades at Greenwich High School; he wants to expand IB into 11th and 12th grades shortly thereafter.
Yet Freund has repeatedly said a board vote on IB expansion isn’t necessary because IB is not a curriculum, but rather a “framework” of “international thinking.” But it is curriculum, even IB oversight rules say it is. Under Connecticut law, a board vote is required for curriculum.
In Greenwich, education, especially curriculum and instructional methodology, has largely been under local control, subject to certain federal and state mandates. With IB, the school board yields inordinate control over educational content and methodology by contract to the International Baccalaureate Organization, based in Switzerland.
Though the IB program at the elementary level is generally less intrusive, it becomes increasingly restrictive in the middle and high school years. Loss of educational control was not an issue because Greenwich’s IB experience was limited to Dundee, one of its 11 elementary schools.
At the middle and high school levels, the IBO requires that its strictly defined (and controversial) curriculum take precedence over any competing academic offerings. As a result, in other school districts, IB has squeezed out Advanced Placement courses. Yet colleges generally do not provide credits for IB as readily as they do for AP. And AP is less restrictive and not as costly.
The superintendent said publicly that the district is “several years away” from having a conversation about replacing AP with IB. It is the board’s prerogative to decide when to discuss issues that may affect the school district. This conversation cannot be postponed, so that IB replacing AP becomes a foregone conclusion because of overall IB spending in the current budget.
If IB will supplant AP, let us know that now. I need to consider the long-term implications of IB on the delivery of AP, Advanced Learning Programs and the entire district. Parents and the community would want these answers as well.
IB is expensive. For WMS alone, initial IB costs, putting aside significant ongoing costs, were $270,000. Would expanding IB to another school double those costs? The IBO also requires that districts employ IB curriculum coordinators at each school and ongoing IB professional training. For 2011-12, the superintendent has budgeted $165,000 in IB professional training, mainly for the high school. By 2012, 37 percent of Greenwich Public Schools certified workforce would be trained in IB. Shouldn’t the board and public know if the intent is to convert the entire district to IB?
We could invest millions in IB at the high school, only to graduate a small number (e.g., 30) of IB diploma high school students (of 2,800), as is common in many IB districts. Significant tax dollars would be spent to benefit a few, causing further inequities in per pupil expenditures in our school system. We should know more about other district’s experience with this program.
The IBO also requires IB Diploma students to take expensive tests (about $900 per student), which are graded at its sites, with the final grade in the IBO’s discretion. There is little to no local teacher input. Who will pay for such tests – the district or parents? These fees, expenses and costs make IB an increasingly expensive proposition that have caused some school districts to abandon it.
Once introduced, IB is difficult to remove because IBO Rules impose a poison pill. If a school district chooses to terminate IB, it still must pay fees to the IBO and provide IB teaching to IBO-registered students. The school district must give such students the “opportunity to obtain [IBO]-validated grades.” Also, when a district has discontinued IB at fully authorized IB schools (which neither Western Middle School nor New Lebanon are yet), expensive lawsuits have ensued. In a Pennsylvania school district, the ACLU sued on behalf of pro-IB parents to reinstate IB.
Finally, by signing up to IB, school districts must comply with any prospective changes to the rules governing IB programs, and Swiss law governs any contract between a school district and the IBO. As a consequence, the rules of the game can change, without an open meeting, public say, or a school board or Representative Town Meeting vote in Greenwich.
Is that what Greenwich wants? Does our school system need more controversial initiatives on the heels of Superintendent Betty Sternberg’s tenure and RISE? Rather than adopt an expensive prepackaged curriculum, perhaps the school district should develop its own new curriculum, such as in Scarsdale, N.Y., or improve its existing programs. We need to support student achievement wisely through a focus on the basics — core curriculum and better teaching.
Greenwich deserves a full debate, and needs to know what the implications are of adopting IB wholesale without further question. Nothing less.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Arizona] Comments made by Governing Board Member Diane Douglas
in opposition to continuation of IB Program in PUSD.
Peoria Unified School District #11 – Glendale, AZ; Governing Board Meeting Oct 14, 2010
Agenda Item 15-K – Consideration of reauthorization of the International Baccalaureate Program at Ironwood H.S.
I don’t think it is any secret that I am a huge proponent of school choice and educational options for all children. [. . . ] However, this is one program, one option to which I am vehemently opposed.
I could talk about the fact that, with the IB program, we, as the elected representatives of this community, are relinquishing our local control to an international organization – not just our own federal government but rather to an international organization; that the IB teaches how to “think about” Science and Math more so than how to DO Science and Math; that we have no real control over the curriculum and testing and that IB tests are sent all over the world for evaluating and grading; that the IB is an expensive program for the district and our families – more so than A/P. And all that bothers me but not so much as the goals and mission of the program itself.
I believe, as elected officials, responsible for the oversight of a public school system in the AMERICAN education system, our duty is to educate our students to be productive, well-educated AMERICAN citizens.
IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization) and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) – websites state IB is an “International System of Education.” IBO says its curriculum is “the best possible” because IB teaches the beliefs and values of the UN as defined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR]. These are the rights recognized or “granted” by the United Nations – not the God given rights recognized in our Declaration of Independence and protected under our United States Constitution.
From page ix of Implementing the IB Diploma “The IBO is an independent organization unfettered by individual national demands.” The IB Program has a separate Governing Board. THIS Governing Board, elected to represent this community, gives up our local control over the curriculum and grading with this agreement. And I see that our board packet doesn’t include the contract – the terms and conditions to which we are agreeing – exactly what authority we are relinquishing.
The IB’s goal to advance global governance and promote world citizenship over U.S. citizenship is made very clear by the words of its directors. “International Baccalaureate school curriculum remains committed to changing children’s values so they think globally, rather than in parochial national terms from their own country’s viewpoint”, stated retired IB director-general George Walker.
The IB program doesn’t want to teach our children HOW to think but rather WHAT to think.
When Government, especially a “world government” as the United Nations envisions, becomes the grantor rather than the guarantor of rights then we are all in danger of losing our God given rights as American citizens. That is what the IB program and the United Nations would have us teach our children.
If our community’s goal is for us to take their best and brightest children and turn them against the greatest country on earth – the one that has brought more freedom and greater economic prosperity to our own citizens and others throughout the world – then we should vote to continue the IB program in PUSD. But I don’t believe that is what our community expects of this Governing Board. I believe they would have us be knowledgeable about and protect their children from such programs.
In my opinion, the International Baccalaureate program should have NO place in the AMERICAN education system. I believe that continuing this program is a breech of the oath of office each one of us swore upon taking our positions as members of this Governing Board that is – to support and bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States. I will vote “NO” to continuing this program.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Minnesota] “IB Costs and Curriculum” | Oct. 14, 2006
By Dave Eaton, former School Board Member, Minnetonka School District, Minnesota
http://www.edwatch.org/ppts/Eaton-IB-10-14-06.ppt
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[Nebraska]
“. . . the International Baccalaureate program, or IB, appears to be in direct violation of Nebraska state law. The law requires curricular control by a locally-elected school board, adherence to Nebraska state standards of learning, parental control over a child’s education, and a pro-America civics orientation for any taxpayer-supported public school.
Members of a local school board who fail to fulfill the American civics requirements of Nebraska State Statute 79-724 (http://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=79-724) are guilty of a Class III misdemeanor. But the IB curriculum that is under consideration for Central and Lewis and Clark appears to ignore the provisions in the law that require the teaching of civics pertaining strictly to the United States and to the State of Nebraska.
— Susan Darst Williams, “Why OPS Should Reject International Baccalaureate Mini-Grants,” GoBigEd, June 2009, http://www.gobiged.com/wfdata/frame401-1044/pressrel6.asp
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[California]
“ For five months, those in our school district who opposed adopting the IBO curriculum openly and honestly shared information with our school staff and community. We attended every school board meeting and talked individually with board members.
The school board voted against the IB program by a 3-2 margin. However, the victory lasted only a few short days. Within 48 hours an emergency meeting of the board was held to reconsider the previous vote. This unprecedented move by our board president created a forum so she could change her vote.”
— Kristine K. Spadt, “The Spiritual Worldview of the International ,” Better Education, Fall 2005.
http://www.gtbe.org/news/index.php/1/22/186.html/ Or download pdf: http://hisways.org/PDFs/Intl-Baccalaureate-gtbe2005NL.pdf