For those parents in the hills who think that any time can be vacation time, they serve their time cleaning up and painting flat lands schools in the evenings and on the weekends the same as they do for their own schools.

I also agree – no aid to parents, no green cards, no citizenship, no tax deductions for houses/child care/donations, no housing subsidies, no car registration and no driver’s licenses for those parents who do not get their children to school on-time for 170 or more days a school year.

I almost never agree with Nextset, but I agree with one thing. I agree that we should pay students $250 for long term birth control (5 years or longer – Norplant, IUD implanted and verified annually) for students who are at high risk for becoming pregnant before age 25 (parents, grandparents, siblings have had children before age 25). By reducing the birthrate to Oakland teens by 50% we can reduce the poverty rate by nearly 80% in one generation (a generation is usually considered 25 – 30 years. Certain areas of Oakland have a generational input of 18 years).

Imagine how great Oakland could be if we reduced the poverty level by 80% in 20 years? According to the statistics school attendance would rise, test scores would rise, employment would rise, the taxes collected would rise, criminal behavior would decrease, incarceration would decrease, unwanted and abused children would decrease, and our city would have a history of one generation at a time improving the lives of the youngest, most vulnerable in our city – our children.

Counseling? Whos is going to pay for that? How will that sustain itself? Who are the counselors and how will they measure their work?

Sounds ideal-but its all words!

My approch is this:

1. If a family is getting any form of state entilements or subsidies- theyr kids cannot be truant or they will lose it.

2. If a family is attempting to obstain a visa- Better make sure your kids are in school!

3. Give parents their tax dollars(those that own homes) nad have them pay for school! If they do, I guarantee the truancy rates will drop!

4. If parent is affluent-have them pay money to cover the lost monies of their kids.

Just a workingmans approach, but know it willnot happen!

Working sanctions should include “arrest on sight” policies. As the price of computers has fallen you would think the municipalities would get efficient on picking up the truants. It just hasn’t happened yet. You must assume people and organization always intend the logical result of their actions and inactions.

Therefore, it’s reasonable to decide the school districts don’t want the truant kids at their premises.

If they did they’d have a webpage or even a paper bulletin with names addresses and photos of wanted kids, who should be picked up and delivered to the school truant center. It is really easy to produce such a thing and to post it to the local police patrol division.

I don’t think the schools want the throw away kids. They may have to pretend they do for political reasons but the ADA money is not enough to deal with the worst of the trash kids.

The city on the other hand has crime every day these hard core truants are out running the streets. Their parent(s) aren’t going to accompany them all day, they are free range delinquents. So the city, not the schools, have the motive to arrest them and transport them to the school truant center. Thus the attempts at daytime curfews (arrest on sight policies).

So have at it. Arrest them all you want, the schools do not want to see them. They only pretend to.

The real solution is less unwanted children. We can fix that real fast with welfare policy change (ie no welfare or free labor and delivery services combined with free abortion on demand, easy adoptions, easy permanent child removal from unfit parents or poor parents, child custody policy that disfavors mothers and favors breadwinners). This will not happen until the USA Gov’t as we know it falls – which is certainly increasingly possible.

So what is going to happen is that the cities will try new curfew policies which may change the visibility and number of truants – if the city is willing to spend the money. Since the CA cities are all facing bankruptcy as the state collapses, it’s not clear that there is time or money to change much.

When the state collapses you are going to have a lot of young people milling about selling their bodies and involving themselves in gangs. That’s the lesson of history. So don’t be too surprised as it happens here, because the state is collapsing before our eyes.

And it is not just any children in this situation. it is certain children.

Brave New World.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_15843618

What do you think about that strategy?

Maybe you can explain it for everyone.

Your second paragraph is not clear. Are you trying to argue that the Bay Area Schools are similar to West Virginia? That’s novel. And silly. Bay Area Schools range from SF’s Lowell High and Piedmont’s Piedmont High School to the dregs of Oakland Unified and East Palo Alto schools. Which are we speaking of? What do you mean “neglected by the boards”? The boards in each case carefully plan, plot and structure their schools so that Lowell is Lowell and Castlemont is Castlemont or whatever. What neglect??

“Racist Classist Finger Pointing”? Listen Comrade – even the Soviet Union never ran such bad schools as this. There is nothing “racist” with objective standards of performance and deportment imposed on a school. THAT’S WHY OUSD WON’T DO IT. You see, it’s racist to force our black and brown kids to go to these schools – these black schools – when the Jewish, White and Asian kids at Piedmont never have to go to school with such (poor) conditions. They get strict, well run schools BECAUSE they are what (and where) they are. Otis and Latifa don’t. THATS RACIST. So to make is clear enough for you to grasp, I’m saying this current system is a racist system that keeps minorities down – the bad black schools. We were better off in 1950.

I say all kids, even the negroes, should be able to apply for and if qualified be able to attend a Lowell or similar school. Blacks should not have to go to a dump because of their zip code. And if upon arrival at a “good” school they don’t cut the mustard (attendance, performance and deportment) if they don’t re-enroll to a more suitable school they would be transferred or flunked out. Under such a system you would not have people of all color turning 18 with no idea of the term “personal responsibility”. They don’t get the ten commandments either (ie Fantasia B).

Actually such an improved school system (tracking campuses) would greatly assist immigrants in leap frogging over the natives into the upper classes but that’s another subject. As it is they are managing anyway.

Brave New World.

Test scores and acheivement rates in the bay area are simular to those in predominately white mining towns in Virgina, where certain schools are neglected by the boards and government that run these schools-like all over America.

We should be looking for solutions to our problems not racist classist finger pointing.

Good luck America

In every school system there are disfunctional families with children who are at-risk and who need to be in programs that will allow them to accomplish the most. The Anaheim Special Schools for the Motel Kids is a prime example of one public school district dealing with the special needs of the motel kids (children of trash parents who don’t provide decent homes for them). That school provides food and a safe and stable place for the kids and arranges their transport from the rapidly shifting locations they live in (changes from week to week). The expect to handle the crisis kids and their varied education needs (including clothing, first aid etc).

Understand that I am never throwing out “continuation” school as some kind of punishment station. It is a variety of schools and programs set up to handle the special needs of kids that (no matter the reason) can’t make it and don’t belong in regular and competitive schools.

Because we should not be enrolling students in schools where they are not reasonably expected to fit in, and at the same time we should not be running our academic schools at the lowest common denomimator of cognitive skill and deportment either.

Yes I’m talking about a system of segregated schools, where the higher schools are run to the tougher standards common in the pre integration early 1960s and the lesser schools are not – or at least have the special ed and special needs kids who cannot keep up and measure up in the competitive schools. Enrollment is at will, but transfers can be forced.

And everybody gets their needs met.

Because they are gone. Expelled to the continuation school they belong in.

OUSD is not exactly worried about running real schools, the district is in this for the money and perhaps to perpetuate pretend “teaching” jobs for the pretend teachers of the pretend “students”. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing in a depression. And I’m sure that as they water down education they really think they are “helping” the largely black and brown problem children.

No, I’d rather have real schools with real standards with a real high flunk rate backed up with a robust set of continuation schools and alternative and voc ed schools. Academic Programs are not for everyone and they sure aren’t for anyone who doesn’t want to be there and can’t show up either.

You don’t have truancy problems in real schools. Insubordination and violence problems either. I never had them in my secondary schools. I don’t think the black and brown students of OUSD should have to have them either – just because they are too poor to avoid OUSD.

Now, there is a huge need with this and other populations including Latinos who are becoming the largest group in the state, however his message sounds much like the same.

If a society that has continually made excuses and services avaulable to meet those excuses, when will we ever discuss true responsibiltiy for actions? What do we expect? Fast food creates obesity. Drugs creates an ill soceity. Entitlement programs create dependence! Its simple.

If a population continues to be catered too and recieves preferential treament through services, excuse making, without a penalty or cut off demanding change; there is no incentive to cease their patterns of destruction.

If you have ever had a person in your family who has required an intervention, was it a hug that snapped them out of it? Probably not.

A Tough stance is required. Yes, if entitlements and welfare are cut off, it will make it a tough time for a generation, but tough love breeds change that may eventually blossom in subsequent generations.

Making more excuses and blaming schools, teachers, etc without pointing fingers at the population itself is a mistake. I support teachers and schools that hold the line because I have, and many of you that have kids in public schools, witnessed the beligerance of some parents that have made excuse after excuse about why their kids cant show up to school!

To me, accepting that is a crime. I support the truancy laws, but like Nexset, doubt that a Leno authroed bill has the tough love intent tied with it. Shame on liberals-and Im a liberal!