Dear District Leaders,

I’m writing on behalf of the ACCESS Academy PTA to express our community’s concern about a petition from a small group of parents asking PPS to close ACCESS. We understand the group has met with at least one school board member and is seeking meetings with other board members and PPS leaders.

These parents are spreading inaccurate and misleading information about our school:

• They distort the purpose of ACCESS, which is to provide an alternative for highly gifted students who are not being served effectively at their neighborhood schools.
  
  

• They criticize our school’s demographics without noting they are comparable to those of several other PPS schools (including some neighborhood schools), or that ACCESS is one of the only lottery schools in the district that makes low-income status the top selection priority.
  
  

• They imply that few gifted students are interested in ACCESS, when in reality demand for our school is skyrocketing: applications have tripled since 2019, and our waitlist this year was 7 times larger than the number of available seats (which is set by PPS, not the school).
  
  

• They suggest that ACCESS is responsible for resource challenges at some neighborhood schools — a situation that actually stems from declines in enrollment and capture rates districtwide since the pandemic, on top of long-term population shifts. Redistributing the funding that goes to ACCESS would add only a fraction of a percent to the budgets of other schools and do nothing to address these systemic challenges.

ACCESS families stand ready to partner with anyone on serious ideas to strengthen neighborhood schools and increase supports for gifted students — two ideas we believe go hand-in-hand. Unfortunately, the group behind this petition is offering neither. They’re targeting a single school for closure using misinformation and appeals to anxiety about the district’s budget. They would eliminate a critical service without any plan to replace it, much less expand it. 

Worst of all, they’re sowing divisiveness at a time when families should be united in working toward a stronger PPS with more options to meet the needs of students and families, not fewer. Entertaining this effort would send a message that any school community worried about their enrollment or budget should campaign for another school to shut down — a terrible environment for the tough, important conversations that will shape the future of our district.

In light of that, we have two specific requests:

1. If you have already scheduled a meeting with the group behind this petition, please share the details so that members of the ACCESS PTA can attend. We don’t believe it’s appropriate for you to meet with parents advocating for the closure of someone else’s school — but certainly not without including representatives from that school in the conversation. If you have already met with the group, we’d like an opportunity to meet with the same officials within the next two weeks.
   
   

2. We’d like a timely response from the district on what action, if any, it plans to take regarding this petition. Specifically, we’d like to know whether PPS has any plans to consider closing ACCESS. Either a written response to this email or an update you can provide virtually at our September 18 PTA meeting would be acceptable.

We look forward to continuing to work with you to ensure students at ACCESS and across the district have the resources and educational opportunities they need to thrive.

Respectfully,