St. Paul Topic of Week = Revitalizing Downtown
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Bob's correct in his assertion that there is limited outreach to ordinary
citizens but the Saint Paul Reads program has been a success in matching up
volunteers from corporations with children that need help in literacy.
As a parent of three children in the St. Paul school system, I know that twice
a year at conferences the school has a scholastic book sale. Teacher's list
their "wish list" for books for their classroom and most are filled (at least
at Nokomis and JJ Hill). I know that if I have a conference at the end of the
conference program, I have to ask for other teachers lists that have not been
filled to help out.
If you have 93% free and reduced lunch, I can guarantee that the parents in
that school are more worried about how to pay the rent and xcel bill and put
some food on the table than buying books for the school.
It does beg the point that Bob put out: Where is the administration? Ann
Carroll post pretty regularly and with the truth. Ann, Can you help us out on
this one? Where is the administration in securing books?
To put some perspective on this issue and perhaps give some credos, Books for
Africa, a nonprofit located in the heart of Lowertown recently celebrated
sending their TEN MILLIONTH book to Africa for their libraries. If a two
person office( and good sized Board of Directors) in St. Paul can boast numbers
like this, what does it say about the Saint Paul school administration and the
largesse of their budget?
Regards,
Gerry McInerney
Battle Creek
----- Original Message -----
From: bobt<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 8:34 AM
Subject: Re: [StPaul] Nick Coleman, Star Tribune, Sunday November 14,2004
Column
I agree that the first question should be 'How did it happen' but I think
an equally important question is, Why did it take a newspaper reporter from
the Star Tribune to let us know about it?
Where was the Pioneer Press? Are they so busy defending the Bush policies
that they can't notice failures in our own back yard?
Where was the School Administration? I don't think the public schools
should have to rely exclusively on donations of material like this, but
does our local school system even TRY to get donations from citizens?
Last year, we gave shelves full of kids books to good-will, including
dozens of Boxcar Children, lots of Poul Anderson science fiction books, and
books from the Chronicles of Narnia series. We have also given away
many other educational things for kids, like microscopes, prisms, books on
dinosaurs, inventors, inventions, space and space flight etc.
These are the kinds of things every kid should have laying around at their
own home,but are sadly missing from the environments of many low-achieving
kids.
A google search on: Saint Paul Public School Book donation yields no
information on attempts to attract public donations..
A couple years ago, I took a small box of useful things to my kids high
school. The assistant principle thanked me, but it seemed he had never
seen anybody do it before, and wasn't quite sure what to do with it. The
material included a box of labelled rock samples that could be useful in a
science class, as well as old magazines from immediately after the
assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.
I think our local school system could do a much better job of engaging the
parents and the community in the schools. When my kids were younger, I
went down to offer to volunteer, thinking maybe I could help with something
that used some of my own abilities, like helping kids with reading or math
or computers. All 'parent volunteer' projects were things like cutting
construction paper into 4*5 pieces, collating papers, stuffing envelopes
and similar brain dulling tasks. I lasted one afternoon.
At 07:44 AM 11/15/2004, Mike Fratto wrote:
>If we have this problem with reading materials, what does this say
>about math and science materials?
>
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