Personally, I have a "don't ask don't tell" philosophy towards cell phones. Many of our students travel on 2 buses to get to school, and their parents have a right to know whether or not they got there safely.
I think there's a lot to be said for local control. Since Long Island schools are governed by small, elected school boards, the corruption doesn't go too far.
Unless of course, you count those double dipping superintendents out there!
Still, the corruption on Long Island is easier to trace, I think.
I couldn't agree with you more. The suburbs have school buses and react to any problem. Kleinberg could care less. That is why it is "Children Last".
Those great civil rights activists Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee and Al Sharpton bslieve in the dual education system. White suburbs get to run their schools. Black and Hispanics in urban areas get their schools run by dicatorial mayors who put in chancellors who had no experience in education - think it shows?
The very idea of Joel Klein as Supt in Scarsdale would create howls of laughter.
Yup. Our Broad Foundation superintendent (like Rhee) is very, very sure he knows what's best for our kids. His reform plan is making the most radical changes (breaking up schools and merging other programs) at his best performing schools and letting the worst just finish dying on their own.
But heaven forbid a parent complain. Noooo, we're not concerned about children or all children. Only the administration has the monopoly on that.
Comprehensive high schools with sports and electives and extracurriculars still seem fine for the suburban kids. but we're going to have smaller (but 6-12) them schools instead, and we'll get to watch all the above mentioned niceties fade into the past, while test prep takes over all.
Them schools are also known as *theme* schools!
I know nothing at all about NYC vs Long Island. But I know a whole lot about my own urban district. I have called transportation before about missing busses. It takes 10 minutes or more to get through the busy signal to a live person. This person will respond that it is up to the parent to decide what to do--the kids can wait and see if a bus arrives, or the parent can get them to school. With some real insistance, I can sometimes get them to call the bus driver via radio. This lets me know if they have already been to the stop. One day (St. Patrick's Day) they were short of drivers due to "illness." The bus driver had two routes to drive and was running about an hour late. When I ask fairly reasonable questions like: how were the kids at the stop supposed to know this, I get curt responses like, we're doing the best we can.
While there are resource differences with the suburbs, there is a basic attitudinal difference that is galling. Parents are expected to be too stupid to know how badly they are being treated. The role of transportation is to drive busses--not transport children.
One of the unsung little benefits of No Child Left Behind is that it prescribes a role for parents. Not only to the get the "parent choice" option (which has some real limitations), but schools are required to involve parents in their school improvement planning. Not that this cannot be gotten around. My district has handpicked a pair of "parent coordinators" at each school and paid them a stipend for their work. They sign off as having participated on the school improvement plan. Seems like a conflict of interest to me--but so far they have gotten away with it.
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