Significant numbers of Middle School students 6th,7th, 8th grades) do not eat breakfast or lunch. All OUSD Middle Schools are Closed Campuses. Most students have a mandatory 9 period day, 8/8:30 AM to 4:30/5 PM schedule(some also have a required 7:30/8:00 AM assigned tutorial with the classroom a teacher).

True a small “snack” (fruit juice 21 g sugar to 24 g Carbos)”No Sugar Added” Fruit Juice & a very small bag of chips/cookie with “once in a great while” fresh fruit is provided during an after-school Support Class 3:00 and 4:00 PM with 1 more class until 5:00 PM for “Enrichment” activities. No wonder that they are bored, lethargic,disruptive and/or unruly.

Most/Many will not have a full year of PE or Tech class which alternate in an AY. Instead double “academic doses” of English and either Eng Lang Dev /ENG SprBrd, based on CST scores. Guess what they hate, English! Most/some mid-sch have a daily M-F, mandatory schedule of 9 classes, with 5 min between classes & a 25 min lunch. On Minimum days(usually Wed, maybe Fri) Academic Support is usually excluded and Enrichment(team sports, art, drama, etc) is extended 1:30 to 3:00 PM, allowing teachers to meet/collaborate/PD. I think most Non-OUSD adults would be shocked at these mandatory “modern” school schedule for students, especially 6th graders.

Students are viewed as “Widgets” and educators are the “Manufacturers” following a planned script/schedule, not of their making, with sole accountability and liability. Students and parents/guardians are not held academically accountable and are immune from the non-monitoring of necessary additives required(homework, academic environs)in production and inspection(custody and control)required. They bear no liability for “Recalls of Academically Defective Widgets”. Only the Mid Sch teacher, who has them 55 min 4 days a week and 25 min on 1 day on the “Academic Assembly Line” is solely responsible for the “Widgets Academic Failures”.

Not one adult would accept this schedule/liability as a condition of continued employment. Any wonder why there is a teacher shortage after mandatory (Teach for America) contracts expire for new teachers? In fact these Assembly Line employment mandates and conditions violate many US/CA Labor, Commerce and Contract Laws, are inherently harmful and therefore unlawful-Oops, not for Stu/Teachers on the Widget Education Assembly Line.

These guy are bunch of left wing lobbyists and propagandists.

They back left wing issues and candidates, especially matters which promote BIGGER government. Indeed, a few of the guys whose names appear on the letterhead have spent *years* “working” in WASHINGTON.

Take a look at their website. It actually shows that many of their “clients” are *government* agencies. This entry about sums it up:

Mr. Fairbank has helped school districts and community colleges win voter approval for over two hundred bond and special tax measures. In total, these measures, coupled with statewide educational propositions, have provided more than $50 billion in funding for school construction and academic improvements for elementary, high school and post-secondary education.

Can you believe this?

Once again we see the government using *our* tax dollars to hire “consultants” (their friends) at HIGH fees to work for even *more* government.

Outrageous!

Take a look at what Prop J is explicitly intended to be funding.

Once again we see the special interests at work manufacturing consent.

Here we go again. Public education as a *political* institution.

There’s a long list of special interest groups who work to push their particular agenda on the captive (forced to be there) public school student audience.

Unfortunately, all too often they get the chance.

Total leftists.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_MED_BOYS_EARLY_PUBERTY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-10-20-03-44-58

The other races do not have puberty onset so early. The races are different for various reasons.

The thread here is nutrition. I wonder if there is any discussion of the different needs of the kids at different ages – and how all this produces different behavior and different academic success.

Probably not.

Brave New World!

As far as the feedings go – We must have been deprived. My schools, back in the day, featured brown bag luches from home. You could have your mothers make them – or you could put together your own brown bag lunch from whatever was lying around the house. Then go to school and maybe trade something.

What we are seeing here is the schools trying to supplant the parent(s). Another case of the government being Mommy and Daddy without formally taking the child into care and cutting off unfit parents. That is a mistake.

For one thing when you do this you have the child continuing to identify with the unfit parent and to emulate them. If the parent is actually unfit, everybody needs to own up to it including the kid. The parent would be cut off and disrespected. That is a healthy response – and the child finds someone else to obey and to emulate.

This is why the later generations end up worse than the parents.

I am not in favor of schools providing meals and other necessities of life including school supplies for children not made wards of the state. If Johnny can’t read for any reason including being hungry – Johnny should be transferred out of the normal school to a continuation school that is set up to deal with bad families and bad students. That would include working with CPS to yank the kid or to discipline the parents in court to do their jobs or else.

When and if the kiddies were stable and functioning they could apply to a normal school.

That way the schools the good students from good families go to are actually worthy of the name school.

Like it used to be, and how it used to be.

This sounds like the Gourmet Traffic School, but at least there one learns how to read the road signs.

The “Health Happens Here” award?!

This is beyond ridiculous.

What’s next? Recognition of the Captain of the Titanic for the innovation of providing his passengers with a midnight, cold water swim to help them burn off their high-calorie rapasts?

Here we go again.

Yes, I repeat myself. But that’s because the story is everywhere and always the same: a school district spending money (and seeking higher taxes) for purposes totally UNRELATED to their primary mission of teaching Johnny how to read.

Take Yaz’ advice. Don’t engage me. But since you defend the program, what’s to stop OUSD from seeking unlimited funds to provide any service which it deems beneficial? Why not:

a school boutique to provide designer winter clothes?
a schoolhouse lawyer to bring civil actions against derelict parents?
issue all students a bulletproof vest and a tablet computer?
issue all students a voucher for a free trip to the Louvre?