The A+ Activist

I’m not sure if I should be appalled, sick, disgusted or down right lit up like a raging fire… either way when I read this story out of CBS about the little boy who was voted out of Kindergarten because he was “different”, well it didn’t take long for my mommy radar to go off the charts!

I’m torn, one side of me wants to be diplomatic and say, “Well the teacher obviously didn’t have the resources to handle a child with special needs.” You’ve heard me go on and on about budget cuts and the lack of funding for schools and teachers. If a teacher wants to learn more about how to properly educate and work with special needs children, they often have to pay for it themselves because the money from the schools to fund it simply isn’t there and That. IS. SAD.

Another rational side wants to say, ” The school should have worked with the family, teacher and the child to come to an agreement or alternative learning environment for this child.” There are certain avenues that have to be taken in order to have a child removed from a classroom. Plus, I can certainly understand the need to be able to properly teach the other students BUT… Unfortunately for the teacher… the MOM and ACTIVIST in me says…

This teacher used the poorest judgment imaginable. She behaved no better than the five and six year old students she was teaching. Not only did Wendy Portillo (the teacher in question), humiliate, bully, and send the message that if you’re different from everyone else, then we can get rid of you… But what’s worse is that she just taught a room full of young impressionable children that it’s certainly OK to discriminate. Ms. Portillo knew the boy was being evaluated, was even working with the school and the parent to get him properly diagnosed, but clearly that wasn’t enough for her.
Want to hear the really fun part? The state attorney’s office says this isn’t emotional abuse.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

The whole situation is unprofessional on so many levels. Ms. Portillo is the adult in this situation and conducting a poll of children in which it’s not only OK for you to say you don’t want a kid in your class but it’s also OK to tell why you don’t like the kid in the first place.

The little boy is being evaluated for Asperger’s which is a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Now for those of you not familiar with Autism you can learn more about it here and here . I, myself will admit to not knowing much about the illness but I can tell you that it has varrying degrees of severity and also manifests itself in different ways. Some children are fully functional in a classroom, some are partially, with the help of an aide and others cannot function at all. Either way, the teacher involved does not get to be judge and jury alone about whether or not a child being evaluated for Asperger’s or Autism should or should not be in her classroom. There are rules, protocols and other people in the decision making process, not her and 16 or so five and six year olds.

I also have to question what else Wendy Portillo has taught these youngsters with her crash course in democracy. In an age where we are trying desperately to get rid of discrimination in all forms, she just opened the door for any child to “poll” out every kid they have a problem with, doesn’t like or even smells funny… and because she did it, they will expect to do it and have it be OK too.

Ms. Portillo is the adult in this situation and her behavior was anything BUT adult-like and that is what saddens me.

She is an educator. She is expected to educate the children and teach them right from wrong, to be tolerant of those different from us and have acceptance for people. Unfortunately, for the children in her classroom at Morningside Elementary in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Wendy Portillo was absent the day they went over that in College.

I don’t want anyone to misunderstand; I firmly believe that the other children have a right to a positive learning environment but how positive is your environment when the teacher allows you talk down and negatively to another student? What do you think the children learned that day? It sure wasn’t shapes, colors, sentence structure, or the life cycle of a butterfly, that’s for sure.

Luckily, she’s been moved out of the classroom while this is being investigated (here’s hoping she’s moved out of a teaching license as well). But if you would like to read more about Portillo’s rendition of Survivor - Kindergarten style and also her allegations of what finally led her to create the worst moment in teaching history (among other things), then check out Thinking in Metaphors , the author has some excellent information and advocacy for Autism as well as comments from the boy’s mom and updates.

It’s a shame Ms. Portillo didn’t remember that SHE is the adult, not one of the children and is expected to behave as such.

How would she feel if the tables were turned? Feel free to cast a “vote”!

Now let me ask you this… Can we afford to let them down?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), by the time 2010 comes around (two short years away as we are half way through this one), there will be 50 million kids in public elementary and secondary schools.

It’s a landmark number for our nation.

It should be a wakeup call for our federal and state governments to get on the ball and make sure every student has the tools it needs to succeed.

I am not holding my breath are you?

I’ve read so much this week in terms of funding education and budget cuts and teacher layoffs that it’s enough to make you sick, or at least seriously nauseated. I have a son who is almost two and a half; guess where he will be in three short years? Yup, you guessed it.

School districts have a lot to get prepared for in two years if they want to make sure that every child has what they need. If today’s layoffs and news of budget cuts and funding issues are a sign of things to come then I fear for the children who are not only in the public school systems right now but also on their way there. The money that has been spent on preschool programs and early learning programs will all be for nothing if the schools can’t keep up what those programs started.

Let me just throw some points I’ve already touched on here at The A+ Activist:

1. We lose quality teachers every year because of budget cuts.

2.Schools are closing or being being crammed together because of the lack of funding.

3. Our children already fall behind greatly in the areas of Math, Reading and Science compared to other nations.

Oh and did I forget to mention that those numbers? The 50 million? It will continue to climb to at least 54 million by 2017… That’s when my eight year old daughter graduates.

Anyone ready to be sick now?

When it comes to schools that is.

It seems that some schools are already doing what I’ve been thinking for years.

They are taking the initiative and creating smaller high schools so that the kids don’t actually get left behind. While it doesn’t necessarily improve the grades as much as they would have hoped, it does get the kids in the classroom. You can read the full story here .

I like this. I think this should have been going on for years and not in just inner cities where it’s easy for a kid to slip through and get lost unnoticed. No this is something that speaks to a school’s overall success. Not just the success of academics. There is much more to school than academics. Kids need to know that if they have problems, people will be there and be able to help them. In a graduating class of over 400 students like mine was, how many do you think got lost along the way?

Time and time again studies have shown that smaller schools, smaller classes directly contribute to the success of a student. Teachers are able to devote more one on one time to students who need it, problems and issues can be identified faster and acted on as well too.

What’s more is that the schools that are doing this, aren’t waiting for Uncle Sam to get involved and lend a hand with the the pocketbook. They apparently know exactly how much Big Brother is really concerned about a few inner city kids not getting the education they deserve.

Some of the things the federal government wants to impose on our schools never ceases to amaze me. Especially when it comes to the ways they want to spend the dollars set aside for our kids’ educations.

Here’s what I learned this week. I was speaking to our district’s bus garage supervisor and he was talking about how the government wants school buses to switch to a bio-desiel fuel. Now on the surface this sounds like a good idea right? It’s better for the environment and it is probably better for anyone who breathes in the stuff all day long….

All sounds good. Right? Not when it costs each bus $.015 more per gallon to use it. That’s extra money out of our school’s budget. The budget that is supposed to be used to educate our children as well as transport them. I know what you’re saying the idea of a fuel that is economically better is a good thing, I won’t deny that - but I will argue about where the extra money for the fuel will come from especially when schools all over the U.S. are strapped and struggling to find ways to trim more from the budget.

Many have to cut an excess of as much as 2 million dollars in order to stay out of a deficit by the year 2013. They are offering teachers who are close to retirement incentives to get of dodge now in order to bring in less expensive teachers; teachers I might add, as in one local school district that are already on the layoff list because they are closing elementary schools in the district.

As of right now I haven’t been able to find any information to suggest that the government is forcing school districts to switch to the bio-desiel but I also don’t see where it will no longer be an option for much longer either…

I don’t know what’s more important and surely this is something the school districts have to decide for themselves also but if saving $.015 a gallon means more money towards my children’s education, can you guess which option I would choose?

If you haven’t noticed by now that the overall state of the public school systems in the United States is, well… How should I say… stinks worse than gym socks left in a locker all summer, then you must either homeschool, not have kids in the public school systems or be lucky enough to be surrounded by fabulousness all the time. (in which case, please tell us all so we can come and join you).

The rest of us? Not so lucky. In fact, some people are so totally confused by what’s wrong with the public schools in the U.S. that they have their fingers tied in serious knots from all the finger pointing they’re doing.

On one hand you have school districts saying there isn’t enough funding for schools - the number of teachers cut from jobs grows each year and schools are closing at an alarming rate. In my hometown, it was just announced that two more elementary schools would be closing. This after the district finally got a levy passed to build a new highschool.

Does that sound fishy to anyone else?

Regardless, here are some of the blame games currently going on:

• Unqualified teachers
• Teacher shortages
• Budget cuts in districts because of lack of funding
• Teaching for the tests and not the students
• Too much Federal Involvement
• Not enough Federal Involvement

The first two make absolutely no sense to me: We have a teacher shortage and unqualified teachers yet… we are laying them off with the budget cuts. In fact teacher cuts is one of the first things to be cut. I’m not quite following that. Teachers are also leaving the teaching profession because the schools can’t keep them - in short they aren’t paid what they are worth.

Everyone seems to have a reason for why our schools do so poorly but no one has an answer that works: Bring in more qualified teachers (how can we do that when we turn around and cut them from the job and don’t offer incentives to keep them?)

Enforce stricter graduation requirements (that isn’t the problem. We are losing the kids before they even get to highschool. Making the requirements for graduation tougher doesn’t help. Kids need help before they get to graduation).

Make the school day/school year longer (that does us no good when a large part of the time is spent teaching for tests).

One thing that teachers have been asking for (but no one wants to listen to them) is to teach for the kids, not for the results. Schools should adjust to the needs of the student - not the needs of whole group. In August of 05, teachers were polled asking what they thought and they had this to say: “Schools should adjust to the needs, interests and learning styles of individual students, rather than expecting students to meet the norms of the school.” In fact, 76% of them agreed this is what our kids need… Instead we had No Child Left Behind - which actually worsened the situation and left behind more children!

I have a solution… Have government get their heads out of their a$$es the sand and work with the teachers because clearly, they know a little something about the job of teaching kids, otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing it.