Okay, gimme a voucher!
Jun 19 '00
There's been a lot of hype this election year over school vouchers. The proponents say it will give parents more choice and improve the educational standards through competition. The detractors say it will be the death of the public school system. As a California parent of school age children, I say both arguments are encouragements to support the voucher system.
I've got two children in elementary school, one in 4th grade and the other in 2nd. This past year our family went through some tough times, my mother ill with cancer and my husband's job calling for long business trips. One would think that with these sorts of pressures, the school system would be looking for ways to provide understanding and support in the interests of the students, but in our school district at least, it seems that compassion is a lost art.
Due to the hectic circumstances our children missed a few days of school. These were almost always due to the child being ill, and on a few occasions me being ill and the only parent available to take them to school. Now, mind you, our children are excellent students, always completed their make-up work, and did light assignments at home (such as reading) even when they were sick. The special circumstances had been explained to the teachers, the principal, and the school board, and at the time they were understanding of the difficulties. The woman at the school board suggested we opt for a program that would allow our girls to study at home whenever they weren't able to attend school.
However, the number of absences eventually exceeded the allowable number of excused absence days in the state of California. This number, by the way, is 5 days for an entire school year. The death of their grandmother, a person who had been extremely important to them, allowed them one extra day for mourning. Upon overstepping our limit, in spite of previous explanation, we were summoned to a parent meeting on the matter. We were hardly the only parents who were called to attend this barely polite chiding of our lack of parental duty who were experiencing special circumstances. One parent was there because her son had spent two weeks in the hospital!
After having been warned that any additional absences would result in our being called before the School Attendance Review Board, we were sent away with no additional support. Unfortunately, one of our daughters came down with a cold. My husband, a registered nurse with ten years of emergency room and critical care experience under his belt, determined that she was infectious and shouldn't be around other children and so we kept her home. She wasn't sick enough to warrant a trip to the doctor to sit in a waiting room with 10 or 20 other sick children, just sick enough to need a day's rest. The hammer fell and our presence was requested at a parental review. My husband chose to attend this meeting while I stayed home to watch our children.
When he came home he was visibly upset. The review perhaps should have been called an inquisition. He was seated at one end of a long table with several stern-faced SARB members at the opposite end and grilled as to how he could neglect our children's education. His presentation of their progress reports and explanation of each absence gave them no satisfaction. When he explained that he had been told our girls were on a home study program because of our situation, the woman who had suggested it in the first place, who turned out to be on the board, completely denied the conversation, apparently to cover up the fact that she had never informed us that there was a procedure to go through before the program could be implemented.
What was truly upsetting, however, was the attitude which was blatantly presented that attendance is not followed so closely by the school district for the purpose of ensuring quality education. The main concern of the SARB was not that sick children do not learn well, nor that sending sick children to school only spreads the illness to other children. No, the SARB is concerned with state funds. A warm body, even if it's feverish, in a school seat means money. Their terms to not turn our case over to the District Attorney? Our children had to be in school for the first 45 minutes of every school day, for which the school would receive funds for a full day's attendance, after which they could be released by the school nurse.
If you think it's only the district employees who are so blind to children's needs and that teachers, being in contact with the children every day, would have more sense, guess again. I understand the point of school attendance and applaud that our school awards special recognition to students with perfect attendance, but how would you feel as a parent when such awards are given out with the statement "We really appreciate your coming to school every day, even when you weren't feeling well?" Pardon me, but that's my child the attendee was coughing on, and this explains why our family suffered more colds and flus this year. Thank you, we really appreciate all the misery and the sick days my husband had to take. His patients appreciated it when he couldn't see them because of illness.
As if this wasn't enough, mid-year we received a notice from the school district that California was changing its standards for grade advancement. Problem was, they weren't going to be giving the teachers the materials they needed to teach the new curriculum that the students would be tested on. The district wanted to let us know that because of this, they expected many students would fail this year, but they couldn't do anything about it. We weren't worried about our girls, but geeze, could they have been any harsher in delivering this dire message? Why punish the kids for your failure to prepare them?
With such shenanigans going on and parents being left in the cold more and more often, and schools caring more about money than students, perhaps it's high time the public school system died a merciful death. With vouchers the schools will be able to concentrate on what they're supposed to concentrate on, creating a safe and healthy learning environment that actually prepares students to advance.
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Epinions.com ID:
QueenLyssa
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Member: Lyssa Jaraba
Location: Riverside, CA
Reviews written: 64
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
It's good to be queen.
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