Letter to The Editor
Foreign Exchange Program: Setting the Facts Straight
In the letter to the editor entitled “Restore the Foreign Exchange Program,” Mr. Bigelow did not quite have his facts straight. The Board did not reject the foreign exchange proposals for budgetary reasons. They declared the submitted proposals “unacceptable.”
Each of the Foreign Exchange proposals is available on the school board website as a matter of public record. If you take the time to review the proposals you will find, as I did, that the CGI Greenheart proposal does not have an authorizing signature. Without an authorizing signature the proposal is incomplete and therefore, should not be considered. The other proposal, from PAX, is not what I would consider to be a professional proposal. The proposal is sloppily handwritten and poorly constructed. It is my experience that the quality of a proposal is a predictor of the quality of the work that will be delivered. Therefore, if I were making the decision, I would reject the proposal.
Whether the Board dismissed the proposals for the reasons I have laid out or not, is irrelevant. The board rejected the two proposals because they found them to be unacceptable, not because they chose to discontinue the Foreign Exchange program. Rejecting the proposals is not the same as discontinuing the program. I applaud the Board and their actions in this situation. They have sent a message to all service providers that Clarke County Schools will not settle for second best. I hope they keep up the good work.
— Pat Dickinson, Berryville
