Post in A "Dark View" of the $60M School Referendum Proposal

May 17 17:40 UTC

I was in that miniscule category during the last school referendum
planning effort that argued small class size was not the only basket
or even the biggest basket to incubate our hopes in for success in
schools. Somehow, apparently erroneously I thought, that could not be
the only answer. I argued for longer school days and expanded school
calendars .School and city government people looked at me with that
dead fish look that said my comments were  going nowhere.  I know
from being a parent and now a grandparent that the more time I put in
to education on the home side, the better the results are going to
be. Why would this not be true on the school side?

Then I ran into the counter-arguments for family vacations, teacher
summer education and on and on. If I used those arguments at home, my
children would have been in that low intelligence quotient category
Carol Becker notes from the article she read.

It takes time and dedication to raise children. In addition to
learning how to breathe in birth readiness classes, future parents
need lessons in planning for 18 to 22 years of home education. Some
of the funds dedicated to holding up the safety net should be
directed into training parents on how to teach their children for
those 18 to 22 years. There is no guarantee that every child will be
a high achiever. The fates of nature affect that.

We seem to feel that working with teen parents through birth and
perhaps the first four years is enough. We know from parent
attendance at school functions the high numbers in kindergarten
rapidly drop to near zero in high school (unless it is for sports
events). The essential triad of parent-child-teacher has to be
maintained for success of the child. The other two achieve success, too.

I have been very sad to see few other Indian, African American, or
Latino parents at chess events, book parties, school plays, pasta
dinners, or plant sales even. I know it is not that these other
parents do not love their children. The triad has been broken for
lack of nurturing.

Schools can no longer be unintegrated institutions. They have to
collaborate with other government, nonprofits, businesses, and
community groups to reach out to students where they are, not where
the schools wish them to be. Token efforts do not count. The school
day has to be extended and the school year has to be extended as
well. This has to be a goal and it has to start before the school
system is entirely broken.

Laura
Southeast/Como

Laura Waterman Wittstock
President and CEO
Wittstock & Associates
913 19th Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
612-387-4915
www.laurawatermanwittstock.com