Public Schools!!!

My son goes to public school. They are doing renovations to all the schools with a lot of help of local businesses. The school is 1 in our area for the Elementary School. Scary thing is, they have teachers that are not that good. My son does good in school and doesn't struggle with his homework. He has friends that take hours to do 4 pages of homework. Makes you wonder what the other schools are like....If he Dad would pay all of his child support we could afford to send him to private school (it runs roughly $10K/year + you have to pay for buses + paying for any daycare) Kids have many, many days off here. They get an insane amount of vacation and for too long of periods. For example, they had Dec 21nd until Jan 8th off for Winter Break, then they are just getting back into the swing of things - they have Martin Luther King Day off in about a week; then First week in Feb is Mardi Gras here, so they get 3 days off! That is too many days for the kids to completely forget what they have learned. There is no reason for the kids to have that much time off. There should be year round school with 2 weeks off between every semester/9 weeks. You mention that you are from a town with employment problems. Well, if your kids had 10 weeks a year off instead of 20 weeks, that saves you 10 weeks of full daycare. Now I know here daycare costs really varies, but lets say you have 2 kids at $75 per kid, per week, that saves you $1,500. Even if you had to pay for before school care or after school care for 2 kids, that is still much less than what you would pay for full days of daycare. I don't feel that the school is academically sound at all. They only are teaching kids what is on the LEAP test, but there is so much else to school. What about art, science, history, etc? Teachers are cramming so much information into what few days that they have, the kids are focusing on almost a new key idea every day. Plus since they don't have a lot of day in school, the school has all the test for the week given on one day. If they have 4 tests, by the time the kids get to test #4, they can't even think straight and can not be expected to do good.

I have five kids none which have ever seen the likes of day care because one it's to expensive and two because me and my other half work opposite shifts so that we don't have to put them in daycare. Now the way are schools are we they have science, art and history they also have music and gym and library and they go by days like on F day they have art and on B day they have music and on A and C they have gym and on E Library and D day they have computers and this is at our public schools. The maind curriculum meaning math science,english , history and so on are given every day. Also my kids had an hour early dismissal on dec 21st and they went back on the 3rd of jan. This is the longest vacation they had. they has a day and a half for thanksgiving and they have a day here and there and some day are days that will be canceled if we have snow day. So I must say that it's not all public schools that struggle with the problem you have discribed. I thank you for your time and insight. You can always have your child checked to see if he is above his classmates and then if they don't provide him a learning setting for his abilities then you can move him into another district and the district that he came from would have to pay for his schooling.

So does your son go to a private or public schools. It also depends on the econmic stucture of the place where you live. Where I live both ahve to work to barely get ends meat. The town is slowly dying and the unemployment rate is high. Families don't have the money to afford the special after school activities. So you feel that the days they get off for vacation shouldn't happen. I feel different I feel if the school was better with their budget and the board and commity members took a hit to their salaries so they could afford upgrades or even more teachers then they should do it. I also think they need to rework the sports budget make them do more fundraisers to get money not hand it to them. I have notice that we I live they cater to sports instead academics it makes me sick .. I really think that it's more than offering the after school activty of being able to have dance, art and science offered after school. If you take that away I think you would still see that the school is academically sound.

When I was looking around at schools last year,I found that the Catholic and Public school curriculum were very comparable, but private school blew those out of the park. I can see why your friends are pulling their kids out of Catholic School. Why spend all that money when you can get the same thing for free.

That's what they are saying- save the money for college..

Hi Skinnychick, !st I wanna say we all missed you and that it's nice to see you again. but back to the subject at task I agree that some public schools actually do awesome jobs with the curriculum. I haev had the pleasure in my child hood to go to a public, private and catholic school. No offense but I felt that the public and private schools were much better. I felt that they both have different strengths at times The private I went to in Texas was better than the public school I went to in Pennsylvania and the Public School I graduated from blew them both out of the water because we had people with their doctorates teaching us and preparing us for college specifically they starting in the middle of 10th to start gearing us to how we will be taught in a college setting what would be ecpected of us and everything it was great. Also the diversity of the school that I went to was great you were with all walks of life and every one was so nice. They were nicer than the public school that I came from in Pennsylvania it was great . So I think it does at times have to deal with location/district. I don't blame your friends for pulling their kids out if they are getting the same education from the publice schools. Agian thank you for responding and Have a nice day.

thank you for your response I really appreciate it. In the states it's more common to send your kids to a public school .. thank you for the insight on your country. I appriciate it...

You have some very good points. I too fear that with the way children keep acting out that there are going to be less and less teachers for the student of the jr-sr high schools. And no we don't just want anyone teaching teaching our kids. So I pose the questions how do we make our schools better and get better teachers any thoughts or suggestions.

I just asked hubby if he had thought of it and he said NO i hadn't thought of it that's at least 5 years away lol. But he doesnt want her to go to a catholic school, and neither do i, but there are MANY in our little town.. We are not sure if there is a public school around here that isnt run by a church.. I hope so!

See I'm with you I don't want to send them to a catholic school. I want a private or a good public school system we do have some but don't live in the area's were they are. So I'm hoping to find a nice private school that has scholarships .. Take care and good luck in finding what you want.

Sissygrl, I have to agree with you I was scared when my first child was able to start attending school for many reasons. right now I'm unable financially to send them to private or catholic school in my area there are many catholic schools rather than private schools. But I'm hoping that next year that we will be able to get them out of the public school system.

That is a very good point is it because the private and catholic schools having a smaller child to teacher ratio than publics that some do better? I also see the point where rural public might be better than city because of maybe a slight smaller ratio than city. Thank you for your response.

I would have to agree that sometimes the area you live in depends which is better. How would you get it so that they are equal in every way though?

thankyou for your response. I agree that there is suffereing from overcrowding in classrooms. Have a nice day.

Thanks! No problem.

Yes, no child left behind is a HUGE problem. That program is leading to the demise of the public school system and causes students to be dumber than they were years ago.

so you feel the no child left behind act is part of the problem ? Does anyone feel that way? That is another thing that needs to be looked at in order to have equality of learning do we hurt the children? Thanks for your response that should give everyone lots more to think about.

ok that's a little harsh .. But you then also agree with cynical that part of the problem is the no child left behind act. What do you think we would need to do in order to fix this .. without kicking them out and flunkie classes be a solution as you stated previously.

Bella, you can't force any child to do anything they don't want, especially 'get educated' as the case might be. The child has to want to learn. The child has to want to accept what the teacher is saying and remember the facts. If he or she doesn't, there is not much you can do but remove the child who is a distraction so that the other children can learn. With the one or two bad kids in the class, it makes it hard for the other students to get a quality education with the 1 or 2 distracting kids goofing off and sleeping. I had a kid like that when I was in school. I went to a Catholic school so we had nuns as teachers. We had one kids during class that actually took his books and threw them out the window and then just walked out of class. The nuns caught up to him and let's just say that kicking him out of school was the nicest thing that happened to him that day. They tried to get him to learn. They tried to get him to want to be in school, but he didn't care. Last I heard, that kid was in jail for armed robbery. At least in Texas, you can get on the DOJ website and see who is in jail for what. It's available online. And he was there. And yes, we agree on the NCLBH act is a joke. It's a useless piece of legislation that punishes the good kids because the bad kids are eff ups.

Punish them? A lot of times, a simple spanking, which Catholic schools believed in, or a time out or an "unhappy face" on their progress report for the day was enough to scare kids into doing right. The teachers should have the option to kick a kid out of class. Some teachers are too permissive and too nice and maybe the kid needs to be put in a classroom with a strict teacher to whip him into shape. It all depends on the kid.