Re: Prospective from a Granite City teacher about the upcoming changes. Archived Message
Posted by whatusay on January 20, 2016, 8:38 pm, in reply to "Re: Prospective from a Granite City teacher about the upcoming changes."
I haven't been up to snuff enough to comment on all of this. I've been trying to catch up this afternoon. I only have two points to comment on. First being with this generation of students. We know how we had it during our school careers, we know how it should be in a perfect world. We had parents, normally the mother, who was involved in our education at the elementary level. They were present to dress us, feed us and make sure we arrived on time. They helped us with our home work, signed all that needed to be signed, and made our lunches for the next day. We were bathed and had plenty to eat at home. We woke up to clean school clothes and milk money. Our moms attended PTA meetings, field trips, baked cupcakes and held room parties. Moms never missed a parent teacher conference. And if the report was not good, she certainly didn't blame the teacher. If you were in trouble at school, you were in twice as much trouble at home. That's why we weren't in trouble! And dad was at home, working every day, to ensure mom was able to do all the things we needed to be successful. But it's just not like that these days. Especially in the lower income households in our city. Absentee parents, mom, dad or even both. Kids being raised by grandparents or grandparent and kids raising themselves. Kids getting no breakfast other than what they can scrounge out of the refrigerator, and that is only if there is something IN the refrigerator. Digging through dirty laundry to find something passable for the day. Hoping they can borrow a pencil or pen, some notebook paper and anything else they might need for school. Forget the money for school pictures, there's no money for a yearbook. But at least they will get to have a meal. And thanks to our district, two meals if they want both breakfast and lunch. And many, many times, too many times that it breaks my heart, that will be just about all they get to eat that entire day. They are home alone, watching God knows what on television, unsupervised for a multitude of reasons. Single parent working two jobs, a drug or alcohol addicted parent usurping whatever small amount of available funds for their weed, Vicodin, Heroin or alcohol, and never home for hanging with their comrades in sliminess. Or are they home watching their mom being beaten half to death by their dad or boyfriend? Emotionally absent parents who take no interest in their child's school experience, let alone who their friends are, or if they are performing at an adequate level. Abuse, physical, sexual or emotional at the hands of these looser parents, or falling on deaf ears by the same. It's a different world. While these same things might have happened in our day, it was not nearly as prevalent nor as frequent. Now the percentage is terrifying. So being the old softy that I am, I hate to think that maybe the one place these kids feel safe, the one place they can predict how things will be for the duration of their class time will be yanked away from them every two years. Yes, yes, yes kids are resilliant with proper support. But that isn't always the case. It is just sad no matter how you look at it. I could go on and on, but we all get the picture. The bottom line is they are kids, THEY ARE CHILDREN, and while they shouldn't be raised like fragile snowflakes, they should not be expected to roll with the punches as easily as adults. They are not equipped to deal with the blows and punches that come their way...or maybe they are already dealing with too many. Secondly. I have a question about the proposed savings that the board is forecasting. If they plan on having no lay offs, where will they place (after the closure of two schools) the extra custodians, cooks, for example. The size of the buildings aren't changing, so the existing janitors should be able to handle it. Right? Same with the cooks? How about the nurses? Won't we require less nurses? The maintenance department, they'll be maintaining less buildings, cutting less grass...but the district plans on keeping them all employed? And while I understand the process of attrition, you can't believe that it will all pan out exactly as needed can you? Say when all the players are in place and we have ten extra teachers, what do we do? We aren't laying off, right? The same with all level of staff and supporting staff, it's not mathematically possible for all of this to fall precisely into place and resulting in no lay offs, no programs lost or no new hires. I just watched Mr. Greenwald announce a hiring freeze on channel 4. But wasn't there a few new hires at the last board meeting? Are they considering hiring a project manager who will come in and make this latest restructure happen? Because this is a lot of switching around, not only the children, but the busing routes, the busing period. What teachers will go where? What support staff will be assigned to what school? The prospects could be limitless, and they plan on organizing this all by themselves by August? What will happen to all the groundskeeping equipment at the schools that will close? What will happen to the fixtures, the desks, the computers? What will happen to Lake School and to Worthen School. Will they just sit there empty? For how long? Will they be sold? My rant is over. I personally don't see how all of this can be achieved by August without help from some outside source or multiple sources. And if that's the case what would be the expense?
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