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.