Yesterday afternoon I received a robocall from Superintendent Dr Louis Wool of the Harrison Central School District instructing myself, and of course others, to go to the HCSD website to find out information about the effects of opting out. Nowhere in the message did Dr Wool say anything about whether one should or the consequences of opting out. His robocall was quite ambiguous. It only asked the listener to go to this page on the HCSD website (Strange now how The Crack Team has noticed there is no link on the front page of the website to the Testing FAQ as there was yesterday).


One would notice whilst perusing that page this;

School district officials are bound by an oath of office to comply with all NYS regulations, including testing requirements. Neither the law nor the State commissioner's regulations provide any legal right or method for students to “opt-out “of the mandated assessments. New York State does not have a statutory opt-out provision and the State commissioner's regulations do not permit opting out except under specific exceptions, such as those involving students with disabilities.


Lots of scary words. Yes, we understand that district officials are bound by oath (Is there really an oath?), but are parents.