It would have been nice if the Bellevue Reporter had picked a different headline on the web story of the math textbook meeting (Discussions ‘one-sided’ in Bellevue math debate). The headline made his reporting one-sided, against the people who worked very hard to put on a forum to educate the public about the Holt and Discovering curriculums.

If the evidence shown was skewed toward Holt, it is because the state has recommended Holt for a reason. It’s tough to make a presentation “fair and balanced” when one of the curriculums under consideration has been found to be “unsound” by independent mathematicians hired by the state board of education.

Despite that, the teachers and administrators that advocate for adoption of Discovering in BSD refuse to participate or have a conversation. After presenting several options and several dates, the district declined to send even one person, and will allow very little input into their closed, biased process.

At the information night, Discovering and Holt books were available and Sally Raftery, a person from the curriculum review committee, presented the Discovering text and Holt text equally through a series of slides for further review.

I found it interesting that Jim King jumped up and started yelling about how “biased” the meeting was right in the middle of Raftery’s presentation of the Discovering text. Raftery was literally reading the words in the textbook when he jumped up and complained.

If reading from the Discovering textbook is biased against Discovering math, well … that says it all.

Laura Brandt, Bellevue