Many people in the LISD community see Hudson Pep as a social status school for well off parents to send their kids, but I disagree. My child was tested into this school and this was her first year to attend. I had the same mind set as many of you do about Hudson Pep. I believed at one time it was more important for families to have that Hudson Pep sticker on their car than it was for their child’s education. Now don’t get me wrong there are still some there that believe it’s a social status, but they are few and far between. In order for your child to go to this school they must take a test, and pass to be accepted. This leads to a lot of debate about race, and test anxiety in children. My wife and I decided after my youngest daughter had graduated from kindergarten in a private school that we would do like we did with our other girls and send them to the LISD school district we lived in. After one year her teacher came to us and told us she should try to test into Hudson Pep due to the fact she would finish her work faster than her classmates and would then try to help them, and unfortunately she has her daddy’s mouth and likes to talk A LOT. As my wife and I talked about it on the car ride home from school one day, my daughter who was in the backseat of the truck spoke up and asked me “Don’t you want me to be challenged in school?” Now as a parent how would you answer that question? So against everything I believed in I let her test and she blew it out of the water, thank God she has her mother’s smarts. As much as I am against state standardized testing, I believe that this one test is not bad at all, my daughter felt no pressure what so ever from her teachers or her mother and I. By saying that I believe that there are parents out there who force this test down their children’s throats and give them anxiety. So now is my point which will I’m sure some people will disagree. Now LISD is allowing children to take this test multiple times if they did not pass the first time, saying that they are children and need another chance. This should not be allowed. Looking at Hudson Pep’s report card on the TEA website you can visibly see that these children are doing amazing, because they are where they need to be. By allowing a child to take the test multiple times to pass you will watch your scores dramatically fall, and the children who retested and passed most will feel tremendous anxiety, and pressure to do things that they may not be able to handle. Now I’m not saying that every child should not get a chance to test, but if the standards are not met then that’s it. This school has done amazing things to my child, and I can see a difference in the education she gets at Pep compared to the other elementary schools in our district, but if you ask me, why are we not looking at Hudson PEP and changing our other schools in our district to follow the example that Hudson Pep shows? The district can compare Hudson Pep to any other elementary school in our district by their state report cards and see that this type of education is working. So why not follow the example to improve our neighborhood schools? The US Department of Justice and the NAACP wants to shut down this program due to the fact they believe this school is segregated and does not allow more minority students. But the numbers don’t lie. Today Hudson is 20.8 percent white students, 38.3 percent black students, 36 percent Hispanic students and 4.9 percent students of other races. I can only hope that our other elementary schools will follow Hudson Pep’s lead. I hope that Sue Wilson continues to do the great job she has done, and that the board continues to allow her to do such a great job with our children. We need more Sue Wilson's in our district! Thank You, Jason Bates