Mitigating Disruption: How Support FHPS is Protecting Students and Staff from Unnecessary Distraction
Forest Hills is an attractive suburban area on the edge of Grand Rapids, Michigan - and home to the award-winning Forest Hills Public Schools (FHPS) district. Covering areas including Cascade and Ada, FHPS spans one of the largest geographies in the state (over 68 square miles) and serves more than 9,500 students across its 18 Central, Eastern and Northern school buildings.
FHPS boasts a record number of students who earn National Merit recognition each year, and its graduates advance to some of the best universities in the country.
It’s not surprising that Forest Hills has become a “destination” suburb, inspiring families to relocate to the area for its top academic and athletic programs.
Until now, the community has shared a sense of pride, convening for football games, tailgates and homecoming parades.
Unfortunately, Forest Hills is the latest thumbtack on a national map of quiet communities to be targeted with agenda-driven attacks on its schools and Board of Education.
The elected FHPS Board has been criticized over the past few months – initially over minor topics, such as the national bus driver shortage and greater access to its meetings via video. But, with those concerns addressed, a group of critics has advanced to many other extreme issues, well outside of the Board’s responsibility.
The Forest Hills Public Schools’ board is charged with developing and governing the District’s goals, operations and policies. This means they are a governing board and not a “micro” managing board.
We hoped the distractions would be temporary, but the attacks have steadily grown and are now compromising the integrity of our district and FHPS business operations. Kids can’t focus. The Superintendent recently commented that the Human Resources department struggles to complete their daily tasks because they have been overwhelmed by “Freedom of Information Act” inquiries.
This must stop. Our schools are not the place, and our children are not the pawns.
Schools and their boards have proudly remained free of politics. In fact, board members run with no political affiliation. Classrooms are supposed to be an untouchable “safe space” for kids to learn.
Parents Collaborating for School Protection
When it became clear that the FHPS Board of Education’s distraction would not be coming to an end, a 100% local volunteer group of parents stepped up to help shoulder the noise on behalf of educators and kids.
We are Support FHPS and we believe in transparency. Our only “agenda” is to preserve the integrity of Forest Hills Public Schools and try to shoulder the distractions on behalf of our educators and kids, so they don’t have to. We believe in values like safety, support and success for all students.
We are extremely proud of our schools and Board of Education. There will always be ways we push them to keep making our kids the best they can be – but we also firmly believe there are times and places to drive change, such as formal election cycles, that don’t involve disrupting normal orders of business, meetings or making threats.
Some of these ways we like to stay involved in our schools are through Parent Teacher Organizations (PTO), volunteering in students’ classrooms, participating in opt-in programs and attending conferences.
Fortunately, this challenge has elevated the fact that many of us have long taken local school governance for granted.
Often, those duties have been left to a small circle of engaged individuals. It’s not a bad thing to educate ourselves about local issues and get more directly involved in that process. Our local institutions impact our daily lives more than any other level of government. Now is the time to step up and defend them.
You can help us by:
Sharing facts from SupportFHPS.org and our social channels
Attending Board of Education meetings with us
Volunteering your time to spread the word
Together, we will restore integrity to Forest Hills. Will you join us?