A sixth grader came to the CMS board Tuesday night with a petition, five reasons backed by research citations, and a simple request: get rid of iReady.
Anastasia Bates, a student at Sedgefield Montessori, said the program made her feel like she was failing. She said she had collected about 250 signatures from fourth through eighth graders. She told the board that a teacher had retired early because of iReady, that students had protested, and that the company behind the platform was facing a lawsuit.
The board thanked her and called the next speaker.
That exchange set the tone for the rest of public comments at the June 9 business meeting. One after another, more than a dozen speakers testified against renewing the district's contract with iReady, a digital reading and math platform the district uses for assessment and instruction. A nurse practitioner. A physician. A mental health therapist. A former CMS educator with a master's degree in reading curriculum. A first-year teacher. Parents from Lincoln Heights Montessori, Collinswood, Garinger, and schools across the district.
When the comments ended, board chair Stephanie Sneed said, "That concludes our public comments for this evening," and turned the meeting over to Superintendent Dr. Crystal L. Hill for personnel reports.
The board made no comment on what it had just heard.
The organized push centers on a deadline. Sherry Bissell, a nurse practitioner and Collinswood PTA president, asked the board to decline what she described as an $18 million contract renewal. She named the date: June 30.
Danielle Steele, a kindergarten parent, described the contract as having "a budgeted cost of approximately $18 million."
CMS has not publicly confirmed the contract value. Those figures came from speakers at the podium, not from district staff.
What the speakers described, across the duration of public comments, was consistent: children spending time on iReady that families and some educators say could go elsewhere, testing fatigue building across a school year, and a program they believe is not delivering what it promises.
Ross Glenn, a parent, told the board that a single CMS third grader sits through 17 to 19 standardized testing events in a year.
Ali Call, a former CMS educator with a master's in reading curriculum and instruction, cited testimony from a cognitive neuroscientist before the U.S. Senate: "There is not a single high quality independent study showing iReady improves learning."
Dr. Latoya Owens, a parent with children at Lincoln Heights Montessori, said iReady was pulling instructional time away from the kind of teaching she believed actually worked.
Janika Karthikeyan, another sixth grader from Sedgefield Montessori, described a student so frustrated with the program that he punched the screen of his Chromebook. She quoted an eighth grader: "I'm losing brain cells every time I do a lesson."
Nikita Desai, a physician and kindergarten parent, said she had concerns as both a parent and a medical professional. Scotty Miller, a mental health therapist, said the platform was contributing to student anxiety.
The families who showed up Tuesday still do not know whether anyone on that board was listening.
The board did not say.
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