AnotherPea
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,968 
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Post by AnotherPea on Aug 14, 2015 14:07:50 GMT
Was reading on Francis Howell, haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast yet. I can see both sides. I fully support school choice. I think it's the right decision. I think its shameful that Normandy has pushed their problem off on other schools though. Not the students transferring being the problem, but that the staff and teachers there are so inept at their jobs that they can't do anything to improve the school. I say expel all the trouble makers there. One infraction and they are expelled for the school year. Post security at the doors if they have to. Fire all the teachers because they obviously aren't any good, and hire quality teachers there. Then those poor kids wouldn't have to be on the bus at 5am to go to school. I can also see the other side. Parents choose to move into specific neighborhoods because of the school system. Then to be told they have no choice, but to accept kids from a notoriously awful, violent location into their schools. I'd be concerned too. There would be no guarantee that only the good students would be coming to your school. That has nothing to do with race, it has to do with reputation. Normandy obviously has a notorious reputation. So no wonder parents didn't want the kids from those schools bringing its problems to their districts. I don't think it's easy to just hire quality teachers for a number of reasons. Regarding the influx of the Normandy kids into Francis Howell - the thing that struck me was that 1000 out of 4000 students decided to transfer at quite an inconvenience to themselves. My assumption wasn't that there would be an influx of violence and discipline problems, but that these are kids who choose to go to a better school and wanted an opportunity to thrive. That shows that they and their families value education - those are the types of kids you want, no matter where they come from. I can understand concerns about an influx of 1000 kids into your school. We recently had a small shuffling in our school district (and all are fine schools) and people got really bent out of shape (some I think were valid reasons, some were just resistance to change in general). If my school was suddenly taking in 1000 students I would have questions about class size, teachers, space, etc., but the way those parents were talking at the town hall meeting was just shameful. Just T, thanks for sharing about your experience. It's interesting to hear from somebody who was directly involved. Exactly. |
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Post by Meri-Lyn on Aug 14, 2015 15:33:57 GMT
I found this interesting article today. It shows what happens when a district gets rid of integration. Quite a contrast. article |
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scorpeao
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,521
Location: NorCal USA
Jun 25, 2014 21:04:54 GMT
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Post by scorpeao on Aug 14, 2015 16:59:13 GMT
Sorry I didn't come back to this thread. The last time I looked at it, only a few people had responded and it was on page 2, and I forgot about it after that. I can't get the radio clip to play for some reason. I've tried a couple of times. I didn't realize it was about the Francis Howell school district until I saw this comment:
"To listen to the parents at that meeting at Frances Howell and not feel something well that speaks volumes."
Now that I know, I am not sure I really even want to listen to it. My kids are in Francis Howell--well, only my daughter now because my other kids are no longer in school. I don't want to listen to it because I don't think I can stomach it to be honest. If the audio is even half as bad as the explosion of racist hatred that happened on our district facebook page when this was happening, it will make my blood boil. It was so terrible, and I lost so much respect for people I actually liked before when I read the things they posted back then. I am assuming that what is on that radio clip is just as bad, but I can assure you, those attitudes are far from representative of everyone here. Plenty of people, including me, were completely horrified and outraged by the attitudes of those who were against the Normandy kids being bussed into our district. Reading the nastiness of some people was shocking to me, and I felt like we were back in the 1950s. Honestly, the only thing about the Normandy kids being brought into Francis Howell that bothered me was the huge amount of money the Normandy district had to pay FH, money that could have been better spent on improving their own district. At the time, I felt like Normandy would never get better when all of their money was going to send students somewhere else. It seemed counterproductive to me. The other thing that bugged the crap out of me is that one of the arguments that many people used against it was that bringing in "those kids" was going to somehow mean that our schools would become violent and drug infested. What a damn joke! First of all, nothing terrible happened, and second of all, there were fights and drugs at the high schools anyway. It's not like FH is some utopian, perfect district where kids are perfect and do no wrong.
UGH. I want to listen to the radio show and I don't. LOL
I listened to it last week and it broke my heart. I couldn't imagine being that 13 year old girl who wanted to go to that school and listening to what the parents were saying about what it will do to their neighborhood/school if she does; it actually brought tears to my eyes. People are sick... |
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AnotherPea
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,968
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Post by AnotherPea on Aug 14, 2015 17:00:53 GMT
I wish we could figure out what works for ALL students. It seems that any time we find a solution for one segment of the student population it causes a problem for another.
I'm a huge fan of magnet schools-sent my own children to one because our other school option was just too lily white, dd would have been one of two girls with dark hair it was so white- but the magnet has to be run correctly. You can't just slap a label on the school and expect families to be attracted to it. Once my kids' awesome school dropped a key component (regarding behavior) it went to hell. Families fled as soon as they could.
In a matter of 8 years the school went from being the second highest performing school in the district to being a training ground for the prison system. We were also the only elementary school with a severe behavior self-contained classroom, had the highest or second highest free lunch percentage and had to have a police presence at any evening events because the neighborhood was so sketchy.
The reason why it was so successful is because every single student had a parent that care enough to actually apply. Even the parents that weren't that stellar had to care enough to fill out the application forms. Attitudes about education are huge when it comes to student success.
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Post by pierogi on Aug 14, 2015 17:48:52 GMT
I found this interesting article today. It shows what happens when a district gets rid of integration. Quite a contrast. articleThanks for posting that. Those poor kids. |
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pridemom
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,843
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Post by pridemom on Aug 14, 2015 18:57:39 GMT
With what money? It's nice to think that "quality teachers" (and administrators) would be found and then willing to work in the most notoriously rundown school around, but if there is no money to fund them, books, tools for teaching, resources for actually reducing crime around and within the school....it is a cycle we see around the country. I can only imagine the condition of the actual building.  Until the state actually steps up and funnels more tax $ into that school, it will go on. Sad truth, as a taxpaying Mom of 2 in a great school district, even I admit it would be a "hard sell" to me why my tax$ shouldn't go into the district/schools we live in - but it's exactly my admittedly selfish thinking that keeps schools like Normandy and even the ones I subconsciously know near where I live are the "bad" schools, in this no-win situation. Something has to give, and it's terrible to know it's OUR country's kids who do. Until every person in the state says, I don't care what district or where those kids live, they should get a quality education, and hold their governor and government accountable for the whole state's test scores vs. their district's, very very little will or can change. Teachers do get a tax incentive for teaching in low income schools. At least I think they still do. Tax payer dollars go into those schools. Test scores are the worst way to gauge successful education. It's why our education system is in such a mess. Until the Feds get out of education and leave it to the states we will continue to see it be a mess. You are right though, it is a vicious cycle. The schools need property taxes to get funding, but the property values in these areas continue to decline because no one wants to live there, because a large enough percentage of the population is unsavory and criminal to make it unlivable. So people move away, and eventually some of these same problems follow them and the cycle continues somewhere else. So then the people in those neighborhoods move away to get away from the problems coming in, and maybe they move back into the previous neighborhoods because housing costs are now so low, and they end up bringing up the quality of life in those neighborhoods, making them safer, bringing in more tax dollars, and they get vilified for gentrification. It's a no win situation. I wish we could send criminals to an island and forget they exist lol. JK, only hardened criminals. like to Antartica or something. There is no tax incentive to teach in low income schools. Not in Missouri anyway. My hubby has worked low income Missouri schools for 23 years and we've never had that. As for the way Missouri rates schools, it is based on multiple factors. The biggest is our state assessment test. Hubby has explained the scale and it's not really fair to schools, especially those serving largely at risk students. They may be improving, but not at the required rate, so they're labeled as failing. |
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Apr 30, 2024 5:47:24 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Aug 14, 2015 19:14:00 GMT
I wish we could figure out what works for ALL students. . That's precisely the problem. You can not have success in a one-size-must-fit-all system. Every child has individual needs. One answer will not work when there are many questions. |
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Until the state actually steps up and funnels more tax $ into that school, it will go on. Sad truth, as a taxpaying Mom of 2 in a great school district, even I admit it would be a "hard sell" to me why my tax$ shouldn't go into the district/schools we live in - but it's exactly my admittedly selfish thinking that keeps schools like Normandy and even the ones I subconsciously know near where I live are the "bad" schools, in this no-win situation. Something has to give, and it's terrible to know it's OUR country's kids who do.