Posted on 05/17/2002 10:37:04 AM PDT by summer
FL Gov Jeb Bush accepts a grateful hug from a young student
at a FL public school, Wimauma Elementary - where 85% of students are
children of migrant workers, yet: rising student achievement caused the school
to improve its grade from a "D" to an "A" in just two years.
Tuesday, May 14, 2002
Associated Press
Governor's campaign goes to school catering to migrant families
By Vickie Chachere
WIMAUMA, Fla. (AP) _ Gov. Jeb Bush took his run for re-election Tuesday to an elementary school that turned its academic fortunes around despite its transient population of migrant families and children who barely speak English.
At Wimauma Elementary School, Bush chatted with children in Spanish and shared a song with 5-year-olds learning how to read and write. In a poignant moment, the governor asked one fourth grader working on a writing assignment what her story was about _ the girl replied it was about her mother who died in August.
Despite the challenges of a school population where nearly all the 700 children depend on free or reduced lunches and 85 percent are the children of migrant workers with limited English skills, Wimauma Elementary earned an ''A'' in last year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
The school has lower-than-usual student-teacher ratios _ one teacher for every 20 students in kindergarten through third grades, one to 25 for the older students _ and has been given the flexibility to teach classes in English and Spanish.
Bilingual teacher-aides help out those teachers who don't speak Spanish, and about 100 volunteers from nearby Sun City, a retirement community, provide even more help.
The school's principal said the accountability demands set by the Bush administration also helps.
''FCAT [FL test] is the propeller of this school,'' said Principal Carol DeAgazio. ''It gets the school going. We don't want to be on the bottom rung.''
The event came on the second day of Bush's newly intensified campaign. The governor had limited his re-election activities until after lawmakers finished with the state budget during a special session that ended Monday.
Bush said he is pleased with lawmakers' work, which includes a 6 percent per-student increase for Florida's public schools.
''I believe this is a state in its ascension, not in decline,'' Bush said.
Bush's campaign was taking him to Orlando later Tuesday for a town hall meeting with high school students.
Gov. Bush sees things eye-to-eye with FL's Wimauma elementary students.
You must mean our "leaders". They are the ones who vote for open borders and welfare assistance to illegals. If a U.S. citizen vote was taken, as it was in California a few years ago, I estimate that 70% of Americans would vote against it. California's vote against services to illegals was shot down by a liberal judge, WHAM! Our "leaders" don't care what we want.
We have many local churches working with our migrant neghbors. They work hard, want better futures for their children than they had, and do not take our freedoms in America for granted. I'd trade our leftist university grads and Hollywood activists for these generous, families anyday...my own grandparents came for the same basic reasons. Interesting, the ones complaining the loudest would never "stoop" to do the work of these workers....which is coincidentally why the early "utopian" settlements in America failed...none of the dreamers wanted to get their hands dirty.
re. #42, LOL! You are a gem, summer. (^:
Great post, summer! Thank you!!
This is the key in both Jeb's and his older brother's education policies. Demand accountability for tax dollars spent, and it becomes an investment, not a giveaway.
As to the whole migrant issue.....I am bewildered when I read the posts of people who claim not to be bigots, whose every word they write belies that claim.
For example in this very thread: migrant = illegal = despised. Pathetic. Do they not realize how obvious they are?
It's the love for their fellowman, and the compassion for the less advantaged the Bush family has, that some people around here seem to hate the most about them.
WAY TO GO, JEB!!
Yes you would be.
Your entire poost is basically correct with the exception of Brazil, they speak Portugese.
"I've also heard (from Puerto Ricans and Cubans) that 'Columbian Spanish' is the 'best' or most rigorously 'correct' of all the new world dialects."
I don't know, I can't understand a word they're saying most of the time.
:-)
Luis
I am bewildered by a lifelong Republican who uses a typical Democrat slur of "bigot" to refute a poster who voices an opinion in immigration issues.Particulary illegal immigrants.I am not sure if you live here in Florida, or in any "border" state, but the problem is huge and reducing it to the worn out bigot taunt is offensive.
It is possible to have native farmworkers and legal immigrants perform the types of backbreaking work required to sustain this country.What I find intolerable is the public acceptance of virtual slave labor, by corporations large and small,in many industries throughout the USA.
Hiring illegal immigrants is against the law! Paying substandard wages,off the books, is against the law!Enforce the law, and perhaps the extreme poverty and degrading working conditions will cease to exist,and low skilled citizens of this country will have an opportunity and an incentive to work. Why on Earth should billions of dollars go to farm subsidy programs to pay for an industry that routinely flaunts their contempt for the labor laws of this country?
But hay, as long as your maid and your pool boy only cost $50.00 a month, it will be wink wink nod nod to abiding by the law.You are really helping the children!
My family has been house hunting in Florida and in doing so have looked into what school districts are best. One of the things we learned is that the state letter grade to schools is based on comparisons to themselves not to the other school districts. Therefore a school that had an average score of 90 on a standardized test in one year and then a 91 the following year would not get as good of a grade as a school that had 60 in the first year and 80 in the second year.
Can any Florida FReepers verify this?
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