Feb. 14—GOSHEN — The city of Goshen and the Goshen Community Schools met together Monday night for their annual joint meeting of the Goshen Common Council. Parkside Elementary School fourth-grader and Goshen's Kid Mayor Paul Conner Gwaltney led the meeting with support from Goshen Mayor Jeremy Stutsman.
While much of the meeting consisted of general presentations from various boards and groups discussing joint ventures of the district and the city, and not much conversation outside of the discussion items occurred, youth leaders at the meeting addressed concerns they experienced within the school district.
Goshen Common Council Youth Adviser Karen Velazquez Valdes recalled to the boards that last year she tutored a student who was a sophomore at Goshen High School, who apparently never learned long division.
"I know he's not the only one," she said. "I think a lot of issues within students have been neglected."
She encouraged the district to investigate why and how children should be moved ahead without those skills.
Goshen Community Schools Youth Ambassador Lauren Grant echoed her sentiment.
"I was a tutor as well and I had a couple students who struggled with addition, which was a little surprising but we worked through that," she said.
Grant also commented that despite the community demographic, city and school meetings have low minority turnout.
"I think that's a little bit of a problem considering it's a large amount of students in our school who are Latino or other minorities and they obviously have parents," she said.
Velazquez Valdes informed her that she and Goshen city councilman Gilberto Perez are working on putting out a radio program aimed at Latino and Spanish-speaking community of council affairs, although it would also be beneficial to include schools.
Items discussed during the joint meeting included:
—Parks & Recreation Superintendent Tanya Heyde presented to the two boards updates on the parks and recreation department. The parks department is also working toward renovations at the old Riverdale Elementary School which will become a neighborhood park, and a strategic plan for Shanklin Pool.
—Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley, director of the city's Environmental Resilience Department, highlighted collaborations with the city and the schools during his annual presentation to the two boards. One example is the Larry Beachy Classified Forest, planted nearly 60 years ago. Sawatsky-Kingsley now has two Goshen College interns laying out a methodology by which high school students will measure growth in the maturing forest to create a long-term measurement to watch what happens in the forest as the environment shifts.