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Posted on 06/17/2009 7:50:56 AM PDT by TankerKC
CHINO, Calif. – Summer is going to be a lot shorter for hundreds of elementary school students in two Southern California communities.
Students at Dickson Elementary in Chino and Rolling Ridge Elementary in Chino Hills were supposed to be done with school on Thursday, but a clerical error means they will have to make up 34 days or the schools will risk losing $7 million in state funds.
Under California law, schools' occasional short days — taken to allow teachers time for preparation — must be at least 180 minutes. An internal audit in May found 34 days at the two schools that were only 170 or 175 minutes.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Fiscally irresponsible boneheads.
That's a lot of days. They could have a "short day" every week that doesn't already have a holiday and still not have that many.
California should fund a study to see if why their public school students are not learning as much as kids elsewhere manage to learn (since I'm sure they would never guess the problem on their own).
We already know that the majority of elementary school is busywork, but rarely is it quite so blatantly revealed.
>>34 half days means they are already throwing away 10% of the school year
more like 19%. School years are only around 180 days.
ROFL I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of those school districts!
Being in a leftist state, aren’t the kids already much smarter than their peers in the other 49, er, 56 states?
Sounds like those schools are learning as much as the students are...
I’m so glad I don’t live in mexifornia anymore. Moved out when I joined the Air Force in 1976 and haven’t lived there since.
What state do you live in, our school year is 240 days.
What state do you live in, our school year is 240 days.
What? The country isn’t going COMMUNIST FAST ENOUGH????
I am a product of the government schools (GS). I graduated from high school in 1957 and was exposed to several hundred teachers. Most were dedicated professionals. And I can STILL name the EXCEPTIONAL ones.
Edna Kleinmeyer who didn’t just teach English: She imbued us with a love of language I carry to this day. It was Ms. Kleinmeyer who told me I had a gift for writing;
Charlie Kluckholn, the tough old wrestling coach who taught chemistry and gave me some of the best advice I had received to that time;
Charles Huffman, the homeroom teacher who helped me over a very rough spot in my life;
Franklin Jefferis, a “lowly” shop teacher, whose love of a job well done was wordlessly communicated to his kids in thousands of subtle ways. Mr. Jefferis died soon after I graduated. One October night, I “visited” him – alone — at the funeral home and wept as I thanked him one last time.
But the current GS are radically different from the system through which I passed 50 years ago. Know that my concern and hostility are NOT directed at those who still TEACH — really teach, really want the best EDUCATION for the kids, want to prepare them academically for the future.
Those feelings are reserved for SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS who have socialist/collectivist agendas or quietly acquiesce to the agendas imposed on them from above. They know that what is going on is wrong, but say nothing lest they jeopardize their careers. Author Thomas Sowell calls these folks “the anointed.” And as the title of his book on the subject, “The Vision of The Anointed,” indicates, they HAVE a vision!
That it is NOT the PARENTS’ vision is of no concern to them.
When my kids were still in the GS, my wife and I were quite active. The Principal of their elementary school chose me to represent the school in something called the LSAC (Local School Advisory Committee) program. I attended several meetings held at the County Board of Education headquarters. I came away from the VERY FIRST of those meetings with these impressions:
1. Those folks DID NOT speak English. Through tight little smirks clearly indicative of the low esteem, indeed, contempt, they had for the uninformed and ignorant gaggle of parents arrayed before them, they spoke in buzz words and technobabble code only they comprehended. At one point — to the visible relief of the other parents — I stopped one woman’s presentation and asked for a translation of what she’d said. She was NOT pleased!
2. They DID NOT want parents involved! Cookie sales and PTA? OK. Serious criticism of a course or textbook? Verboten! Your option was private or parochial school. There very little home schooling then.
3. Most of these people MAY have once been educators. They were now bureaucrats guarding their turf.
4. Many of those administrative folks were making over $50K and, though I looked for signs of it, I saw little evidence of anything resembling “work.” And this was 20 years ago when the average classroom teacher earned less than $25K.
5. There were WAY too many administrators in the GS. It is a perfect opportunity to provide make-work sinecures for “anointed” members of the educational fraternity. Four years as an Air Force instructor taught me how to spot the signs.
Here’s the “bottom line:” Simply hurling more money into the black hole of the GS WILL NOT WORK. Most of that money will NEVER get to the classroom or into the pockets of DESERVING teachers who actually TEACH. And teach what any sensible human being – REGARDLESS of race, faith or ethnicity — instinctively understands to be correct, morally defensible material.
Bush is right about one thing: We need accountability! Perhaps you recall Clinton’s asinine plan to send 100,000 PAID Americorps “volunteers” into the grade schools to TEACH KIDS TO READ. Why hadn’t their PREVIOUS teachers – OR THEIR PARENTS! — taught them to perform that rather basic skill???
Think about what you just read as YOUR local government schools continue to raise YOUR property taxes.
Another encounter with “The System”
In 1978, my wife and I came to know a young woman named Patty. She
was a devoutly religious young mother who’d become more devout when her
husband and father of her two small sons aged 2 and 6 informed her that he
was leaving. In dire economic straits, I offered to let her stay in our
former home in Chamblee — which was not rented at the time – rent-free until she got back on her feet. She had been clandestinely home schooling the 6 year
old for about 2 years using very well done Christian course materials from
an organization in Texas the name of which escapes me. The lad had recently been tested and had placed at least a year ABOVE his chronological age. As required by the government school authorities at the time, she dutifully apprised the authorities of his scores.
For reasons which would become clear in a moment, Patty had been harassed by the DeKalb County school authorities for about 6 months and, by the time she moved into the Chamblee house, had been — unbeknownst to us — ORDERED to put the 6 year old into the nearest government elementary school or suffer the consequences. Because she wanted the boys to be educated Christians, there was no way she was going to do that and she told them so.
At approximately 2 am one morning, a loud knock on the door announced the
arrival of the aforementioned “consequences.”
Dressed only in a nightgown, she was confronted by several burly police officers who thrust an arrest warrant in her face. With the now awakened 6 year old watching and the 2 year old wailing in the other room, she was handcuffed and led out the door to jail. She was tossed into a large cell with a couple of hookers and a junkie who spent much of the rest of that morning vomiting in the corner. The two young boys for whom the educational authorities professed such great concern were just left AT THE HOUSE — ALONE! Patty was later told that the bureaucrats from Children Services who were SUPPOSED to accompany the cops were late and, in their haste to get this dangerous miscreant behind bars, the cops just missed the fact that the Children Services people were, well, missing. The CS folks showed up an hour later to find two terrified kids, one of whom had just seen his mother hauled off in cuffs.
Patty was ultimately brought to trial under the Georgia Truancy Statutes. Her pro-bono attorney tore the school authorities to shreds and hers has been called THE case that opened the floodgates to home schooling in Georgia. Once they had all the facts, the jury didn’t take long to acquit her. I’m proud to have played a small part in that.
At Patty’s trial, a previously overlooked aspect of the government schools was put into sharp focus for those paying attention: The Director of Instruction for DeKalb County testified that the then current 7 hour school day consisted of an average of approximately 3 hours or less of instruction. At that time, Patty was devoting 4 to 5 hours a day to direct instruction.
He also as much as admitted that the REAL reason they wanted ALL these kids in school was the $3,000.00 per kid per year (I’m sure that number is higher in 2001!) they then got from the state and federal government. Empty seats = lost funds. As in most things, follow the money.
Patty home schooled these two boys through high school.
And how did the boys turn out?
One is now a physician and the other a budding journalist.
But that now seems to be the norm for the growing legions of home schooled kids – which most likely explains why the NEA and the government school folks feel so threatened. For what it’s worth, a home schooled kid won the last National Spelling Bee.
Thomas Jefferson believed an EDUCATED PUBLIC to be the cornerstone of the system he and the other Founders TRIED to leave behind. He would NOT, I feel certain, be a big fan of the current government education system. If he returned today, he’d home school just as he did before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U
so in addition to working already short days, no weekends, no holidays, spring break,three day weekends, Thanksgiving 4dayer,and the at least two weeks at Christmas, we find they also get 34 "short"(er) days to "prepare"...preposterous...no wonder our kids in general don't learn anything...
Fourth-grader Sean Cornish says his classmates “think it’s dumb that they have to go to school for these extra days because some lady messed up.”
But if I was a parent in the district, I’d be pissed that they sent the kids home after less than 3 hours of school on 34 separate occasions.
For "preparation". Apparently, the teachers need a short day every week in order to "prepare".
Good luck to them getting that 7 mil from the state (taxpayers).
“a clerical error means they will have to make up 34 days or the schools will risk losing $7 million in state funds.”
Interesting how knowlege didn’t factor in, isn’t it?
That is INCREDIBLE, since there are only 260 (5 * 52) week-days in a year!
Weekends, holidays, and vacation days are NOT countted as "school days" in any district I've ever lived in, in any of the four states I've lived in.
"Instructional days", or similar, is the usual proper term.
Just when you think that there could not be any more reasons to homeschool, the public education system goes on to provide one, and thus prove that truth is stranger than fiction.
They do not have to be full days to counted as such in our district. Although I did overshoot that after the posting I went to our calendar and counted....it is 200 days. I apologize. For some reason I had 240 in my brain.
It’s a total ripoff when you realize that the kids had to ride a bus (or be carpooled to school) at a total time of 30minutes-2hours (round trip, plus time waiting for students to all arrive or for the bus to leave).
So the bulk of their memories of the day will be GETTING to and FROM school and anticipating getting the afternoon off.
It isn’t a “clerical error”, it is an NEA scam to count it as “education” when it isn’t.
Wow for 15 minutes a day they have to have 34 days of school...
No problem. Mostly, we had 180-200 days way back when—usually 2-18 week semesters plus a up to a week of finals on one end, & opening folderol on the other.
It was the same at college, though not too many years later they switched to “quarters”, whereby, via “new math”, three quarters = 1 whole year.
I enjoyed your post but I must disagree with this one statement above.
Any teacher who assist, aides, and abets, or remains silent about the abuses of the government IS, IS, IS, very much a part of the problem. It doesn't matter if their teaching is good, bad, or ugly.
If there is an effective teacher out there, then why are they cooperating with a system that in the end hurts children?
Christian teachers should be held is special contempt. It is impossible to be true to one's Christian faith, an teach children to be comfortable with a god-less worldview. ( ALL government schools teach all subjects from a godless perspective.) There is a fundamental disconnect there and the students know it. What lesson is taught? The students are taught that Christian teachers will teach a false worldview in exchange for a paycheck.
Oh...There will be some government school defender who will insist that as government school teacher they can sneak in a little bit of Christianity. Well...They are teaching the students that Christians are sneaky.
Well! Lucky you!
Since all government schools teach everything from a god-less worldview, and you are pleased, well...lucky you! You get to use your neighbors' money ( collected under police threat) to support and establish your religious atheistic worldview. How nice!
I agree and only added that sentence in what MAY prove to be a vain attempt to draw out any teachers who MIGHT be disposed to “come out” or covertly remain in the system to ATTEMPT to dispense some of the truth missing from the current system. Some have — and lost their jobs.
Reagan campaigned on a plank of going to Washington to DISMANTLE the misnamed D of Education. As a testament to the power of the teachers unions and the other statist/leftist forces which fully grasp the need for a system of school indoctrination to advance their socialist agenda, they beat back Reagan’s efforts and the monster lives on to damage further the fabric of our once great econmic and political system.
Unless and until we get this indoctrination machine under control, cognitive dissonance (if unfamiliar to you, look it up) guarantees that our efforts to undo that damage will be doomed to failure.
“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side,’ I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community’.”
Adolph Hitler Speech November 1933
Hitler had it spot on!
That is good to hear. We are moving back for the first time in 19 years (after my military retirement). I think the city/neighborhood you live in makes a big difference.
Lighten up, Francis.
I think the city/neighborhood you live in makes a big difference.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Godless is the religious worldview of all government schools.
So?....If godless is your religious belief and worldview, then great for you. The taxpayers are under police threat to pay for the establishment of your religious belief system.
I pay taxes for the school system, the police have not threatened me with action, in addition I take the children to church to assist me with their religious education, I do not leave that to the school system, much like my parents did 30 years ago with me.
I prefer to teach my children religion rather than leaving that to the school system.
ALL schools teach religion because there is no such thing as a religiously neutral school. It is impossible. It is axiomatic.
ALL schools must choose between a godless worldview for their curriculum and policies or a God-centered one. Neither is religiously neutral in content or consequences.
So...By choosing a school, ( any school), your child **will** be taught religious values. In a government school the child will:
1) Learn to compartmentalize his faith.
2) He learns to separate his faith from his public life.
3) He learns to evaluate his learning from atheistic point of view.
4) He learns that religion must be hidden and not talked about or applied to his studies. Yes, hidden like a bathroom activity.
5) If he has a Christian teachers and they attempt to sneak in a little bit of Christian values into his day, he will learn that Christians are sneaky.
6) If the Christian teacher obeys the law and teaches his children to evaluate the world from a god-less perspective, the child will learn that Christians will teach what they **know** is false in exchange for a paycheck.
If it is the **law** to pay for the atheistic indoctrination in the government schools, then that **law** is backed by threat of armed police and court action. ( Real bullets in those guns on the hip.)
If it is the **law** that your child must attend the government atheistic school, then that is backed up by police threat.
Yes, it is possible to ransom your child from the government schools, but, a freedom of conscience and religion tax is required. You must pay extra in homeschooling and private expenses while paying for the government establishment of atheism in the government schools.
Thank you for your perspective. It is always interesting to hear other points of view.
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