Rambling Cell

Opportunity For Odyssey

Odyssey Charter School in American Fork Utah has an opportunity to fix a number of issues with the announcement Nyman Brooks, the Director, is leaving for another job.

It has been my observation that under the direction of Mr. Nyman Brooks, some very siginificant negitive changes occurred at the school.  First, the original vision of Odyssey included logic and ethics as part of the curriculum.  Mr. Brooks removed both subjects from the schedule.  It seemed being more focused on testing well and adding subjects such as Latin became more of a focus.  As a result, it seemed Odyssey moved much more to a conventional curriculum that you could find at any local school.  At Odyssey though you have the inconvenience of transporting your kids to a distant campus and the volunteer hour commitment.

Odyssey became much more of a liberal arts school but never did very well even at that.  Odyssey often seemed like a new business that was so caught up with whims of change it never really defined itself.  Rather than changing management to fit the “product”, management was constantly trying to change the “product” to fit their style.  This is very rarely a successful direction.  Every year a new curriculum was introduced.  When it would not work rather than questioning the abilities of the Administration, it was always blamed on the curriculum itself.

With Mr. Brooks departure, the Board has an opportunity to find a Director that is more considerate of the original vision of the school as well as capable of handling the  curriculum.  They would do well to find a Director that is a good communicator and holds his staff to an appropriate level of professionalism as well.  Hopefully they will be able to take advantage of this opportunity.

I think Odyssey has some real challenges beyond a new Director facing them.  The location of the campus and the rise in gas prices make it more expensive for parents to enroll students.  This coupled with the time it takes to get students to the school and the volunteer hour commitment all reduce the likelihood parents will enroll their kids.

The Board in a recent letter stated Odyssey is fully enrolled for the first time in it history.  I believe this was a deceptive statement.  Very much a smoke in mirrors statement.  Odyssey may be fully enrolled in the sense that it has filled up to the capacity allowed by the Charter.  All grades are not fully enrolled though.  If you broke enrollment down by grade the 7th and 8th grade still are not fully enrolled.  Enrollment is skewed towards the lower grades.  For instance there was an additional 15 student kindergarten bubble class added.

The claim is that with ECRI, it doesn’t matter if you add an additional 15 3rd graders as they will be placed in classes according to their level on a subject.  So you may have 3rd grade students mixed with 2nd grades, 4th graders, etc.  The reality is, if you have a Junior High aged student, they will still be one of only a few kids that age.  Additionally, with ECRI, their teachers will be generalists versus subject experts so they may not get the same quality instruction they would elsewhere.

In fact, the Junior High math and PE teacher that was phenomenal just left to take a job at another school because of this change.  This teacher, and Founder, also pulled her kids from the school to take them elsewhere based on her concerns with what was taking place at Odyssey.

I think the past Director and some current Board members have put Odyssey at risk of failure.  It is my hope they can make the necessary course corrections before the ship sinks.  Original Founders continue to leave based on the issues currently being faced at the school.