In reading everyone's comments, especially the one about how there are so many problems that we can't expect to solve the school's problems, I come back to my original thought, which was, how those of us who care about kids need to demand that more money get put into the schools. Yes, we need to look at how the schools are being run -- how can we make them more efficient, get more parent involvement, etc. But we need to also not get so totally bogged down in that discussion that we overlook that we as a society need to devote more resources to the schools. Partially because that is one place where we can make some changes for kids and hopefully for our society as a whole. There was some movement a number of years ago to make the schools more open to the community, and I know that some schools have developed Resource Centers to help parents and get them involved. But my experience has been that school administration does not really want any critical input -- just cheerleading. Some parents at Seward School and the Seward neighborhood group and many activists and artists in the neighborhood were working towards using the school space more of the day. A group of us parents got a grant to do work with truant kids and use a less punitive, more restorative method for discipline. There were lots of community people willing to help. But our neanderthal administration managed to alienate the community people and made sure that there was no community or parental input into the grant after a short period of time. I have numerous examples from my experience of trying to involve more parents of African American Students -- who are vastly underrepresented in the school parent committees, only to run into a lack of interest at best, and sabotage at the worst from two principals. Yet we all agree that more parental and community involvement would really help. That's why I think that we need to demand more money from the gov and our legislators. Many people here have suggested a number of good ideas -- to spread the experienced teachers across all the schools, to provide different programs for different kids and their different needs, reduce administrative costs [the Area Superintendant never even responded to an anguished letter I sent about problems our Parents of African American Student group was having with our school administration.] We need to keep talking about these details. But at the same time, I really think we need to keep our eyes on the horizon and not fight over what we are going to do with the crumbs the legislature and the government are throwing us.
Diane Wiley Powderhorn Park _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
