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<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">Sent to all on the list:</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">----------------</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times;">Good Day to You,</span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thank you for your kind attention, and your service to our state.</span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I am a father and a grandfather of academically gifted children and grandchildren, s</span><span style="font-size: medium;">o it may be of some surprise that I write not to pan but to praise the proposed revisions to the Operat</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">ing Standards for Identifying and Serving Gifted Students. (rule 3301-51-15)</span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The annual academic growth of all students is a value held dear to us, for all can learn; and the proposed operating standards must certainly be designed to affect the greatest possible academic growth for gifted students.</span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">While we mandate minimum hours of direct services for struggling students, the proposed operating standards eliminate minimum hours of service, but gifted students are different from struggling students, so certainly they need nothing designed specifically for them. It must be in the best interest of academically gifted students in Ohio to have no time mandated to help meet their needs.</span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Yes the physically gifted students – the athletes – are mandated by their teachers, their coaches, to experience many hours of specialized services per week, but academically gifted students are different from physically gifted students, so certainly they need nothing designed specifically for them. It must be in the best interest of academically gifted students in Ohio to have no specialized program or curriculum mandated to help meet their needs.</span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The musically, and artistically gifted students have specially trained teachers to help meet their individual needs for musical and artistic growth, but academically gifted students are different from musically and artistically gifted students, so certainly they need no professionally qualified teachers who understand their nature and needs. It must be in the best interest of academically gifted students in Ohio to have specially trained teachers mandated to help meet their needs.</span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The government of the State of Ohio recognizes the value of our gifted students, and bemoans the fact that a full third of our college graduates move somewhere else to begin their careers. Ohio is experiencing “brain drain,” but certainly moving away from, rather than toward, mandating a <span style="color: #000000;">free, appropriate, public, education for academically gifted students is what will encourage those students to stay in Ohio and plan to send their own children to our public schools, rather than fleeing to Indiana or Texas. It must be in the best interest of academically gifted students in Ohio to ignore the needs of the very young people we want to keep from fleeing the state at their earliest opportunity.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">And finally, while annual academic growth of all students is a value parroted by us, for all can learn, we hold preeminent the value of closing the achievement gap. We parrot growth for all, but we know in the darkest recesses or our being that such gap closure is not possible if EVERY student, (especially the academically gifted) receives a free, APPROPRIATE, public, education. It must be in the best interest of the State of Ohio, and academically gifted students in Ohio, to IGNORE their needs, and provide for them the LEAST appropriate education that we may close the achievement gap, and create a society of equally ignorant citizens.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">Therefore, I can only praise the proposed revisions to the Operating Standards for Identifying and Serving Gifted Students in Ohio. But when will a time come for our children such as now?</span></span></span></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">Grandpa (PawPaw Mark) Bohland <br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">7250 Steam Corners Road <br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #000000;">Lexington, OH 44904-9692</span></span></span><span style="font-family: times new roman,times; font-size: medium;"> <br />Maranatha Photography <br /><a href="http://www.mphoto.com419-884-1693/">www.MPhoto.com</a></span></p>
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<p><span style="font-family: times new roman,times; font-size: medium;">419-884-1693 -- 800-669-8512</span></p>
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