Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Red Hot and Toxic



The newspaper sitting folded on my desk has been there since Thursday, June the 3rd. I read the front-page article, folded the paper carefully up and placed it on my desk with the intent to write about it. Perfect for LA Moms Blog, is what I thought. But I'll face it later. 

It's been sitting on my desk for almost two weeks, glowing red hot and toxic. The article is titled Disabled students losing 200 classesand reports on the budget crisis reaching The Los Angeles Unified School District's most vulnerable students. We all see these articles daily, and those of us in the school system skim them and sigh. If we've got any energy left, we work to raise money at our schools so that our children's class sizes remain smaller or perhaps so that aides won't be let go, to maintain what little art and music and physical education programs there are stay that way. And the deluge of bad news keeps coming. I have two boys who attend a neighborhood charter school with remarkable parent-driven support. I also have a fifteen year old with severe disabilities who attends one of the city's lowest performing schools, where she is in a class for moderately disabled students and receives minimal services. The vast majority of the students there are disadvantaged and I have seen, first-hand, that they are getting screwed by the LAUSD. But this blog post is not about them.

Read the rest over at LA Moms Blog HERE.

6 comments:

  1. And the band played on...There is this unnatural state of affairs where those who need the most are the ones granted much less than those who need very little or nothing at all. Politicians create crisis as if they expect that from their chaos stars would be born, and blame everything and everyone when instead a taste of Hell is the result of their ignorance and their persistence in error.

    I am sick of the fact that we continue to spend more money building jails than schools. I guess that speaks for our national ethical conduct as a whole...sigh

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  2. Yes, I do not understand how this government is robbing our children of it's education and it's future. It makes me sick!

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  3. sounds more like "atomic fireballs."
    have you tried those for fun?

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  4. so disheartening... like, don't we all have enough to worry about it general w/o worrying about the crappy education of your beloved little ones? btw... were you shocked at svmoms blog's announcement?!?! i wasnt expecting that... but it was a relief bc ive been debating "quitting" for 3 months now and it just gives me an easier "out." :)

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  5. Not relevant to the article, but to the picture: Kathleen and I lived in Oak Park, IL--just a mile or so from the Ferrara Pan factory in Forest Park. When the wind was coming from the south-southwest, the aroma of cinnamon (or lemon, or grape, depending on what the factory was making that day) would pervade the neighborhood.

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