Showing posts with label Shelby County Schools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shelby County Schools. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Your Kids' New Classmates . . .

Schools here in Memphis get started next week, August 4th.  There will be lots of changes.  After Memphis City Schools surrendered their charter in 2010 to force consolidation with the Shelby County Schools, the subject of education has been a sore spot here in Memphis.  There has been a lot of angst, confusion and name-calling going on.  The parents of the municipalities didn't take kindly to a forced takeover by the failed MCS, so they responded by creating school districts of their own.  Next week will be the kickoff for the new schools.  I wish them well.  The parents in the municipalities showed what can happen when citizens get involved with self-governance.  Kudos to them.

So all will be hunky dory right?  Not so fast.  The municipal schools will still be dealing with Common Core, but that is a subject for another post.  No, what I am referring to are all of the illegal "unaccompanied" minors that will be joining our kids in school.

From The Daily Caller:  ~h/t Education News~
American kids and teenagers will be sharing their already-crowded classrooms with tens of thousands of ill-educated Central American migrants this fall, because President Obama is distributing perhaps 100,000 Central American migrants across the country.

The arrival of the American students’ new classmates was highlighted July 25 when Obama’s agencies announced he had already distributed 30,340 foreign youths and children by July 7.

Virginia received 2,234 foreign students and Maryland got 2,205, according to the announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services. Texas got 4,280 foreign students, North Carolina got 1,191, and New Jersey got 1,504, said the government statement.  ~My note: Tennessee got 760~
 Those numbers may double by October, however.
More than 50,000 Central American children and youths have crossed the border since October with the aid of smugglers, usually working under a contract with their parents. More that 90 percent say they are teenagers, and more than 95 percent are being released by Obama to their U.S.-based parents or relatives, many of whom are illegal immigrants.

Another 50,000 Central Americans have crossed in so-called “family units,” of at least one parent and child. A few of those are being repatriated, some are being held in government facilities, but many have been bussed or flown to cities where they want to live, despite widespread protests from worried Americans.

More migrants are expected to cross before winter sets in, and next’s year’s inflow is expected to be much larger than this year’s flood, unless the federal government sharply changes its immigration enforcement policies.

Roughly 30,000 Central Americans children and youths arrived from 2012 to September 2013. Most of them are enrolled in U.S. schools, including some who are believed to be over 18.

Not only are these kids not literate in English ~how can they be expected to be?~ they aren't even literate in Spanish.


Another concern that we as parents should have is all the infectious diseases that these kids are bringing with them.  There's tuberculosis, scabies, chicken pox, pneumonia, H1N1 just to name some of them.  I have a daughter whose immune system is compromised because she is on anti-rejection drugs for her transplant.

Chicken pox is the least of my worries as a parent.  Without getting into the whole vaccine debate, ~even if vaccines are as effective as claimed~ it is a fact that vaccines don't give 100% protection.  Here is the link for the vaccines that are required by Shelby County Schools for school registration?   Vaccines for TB, scabies and H1N1 are not on the list.

How about all the MS-13 gang members that are coming across?  Did you know that the vast majority ~84%~ of these "children" are teens?

Even if you believe that the compassionate thing to do is educate these youth, what is it going to do to our schools already stretched budgets?

From  the Boston Herald:
“We certainly don’t want to communicate that our city is not a welcoming place, especially for young children, but we have to be concerned about our finances and our ability to serve all of our citizens,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell. “If the point comes where we feel as though our resources are getting too strained, we’re going to look to the state and federal government for assistance because that is only fair.”

With our own school, municipal and personal budgets tight, is it really "fair" to our kids to take resources from them to give to illegal entrants?  Schools have security systems to keep out threats to our children.  Now we are being forced to "welcome" them in?




Sunday, March 17, 2013

What the "Heck" is going on in the Shelby County Schools?

Confused about what is going on in the Shelby County Schools? Join other Shelby County, TN parents for a Dinner/Forum with a panel of state and local community leaders. You will have the opportunity to ask questions that will help you make informed decisions regarding your family's educational options.

Panelists will include Rep. Mark White, TN General Assembly Chairman of the Education Subcommittee; Matt Throckmorton, TN Charter Schools Association; Shelby Co. Commissioner, Chris Thomas and parents from TN Virtual Academy.

Sponsored by CharlottePAC and Sober House Homeless Mission.
Ticket can be purchased Here.
Join us on Facebook.
 

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Shelby County Preliminary Budget


I attended the Shelby County Unified School Preliminary Budget Presentation for the community on February 5, 2013.  My initial reactions were that it was a packed house; of course no one wants their funding cut; custodial staff doesn't want to be outsourced; teachers don't want their support staff cut either. Sounds like the big cuts are to the optional schools and programs. Before doing the research, just wondering why they would cut the best part of the MCS programs. They want to increase funding for Pre-K. Only one person brought up the pension funding and pointed out that since only 25% of MCS graduate from college, maybe expanding their vocation school programs would be more of a benefit to more kids. I got tired of the term "world class education" very quickly. I think some marketing group got paid way too much money for that slogan. As one of my friends said, it's going to get very ugly, very quickly.

Here are the documents that were discussed last evening.  There is the working budget and the presentation to the community last night.

After looking at the working docs and presentation from last night, these are some of my questions:  I will be emailing them to each of the school board members.  As I find out the answers ~either from the school board member or my own research~, I will post them.  If there are any questions that you have, please post.  I will do my best to get the answers.

  • Why are we funding Pre-schools? 
  • What is the loss of MDP officers?  Will the Shelby Co Sheriff's office do what the MDP officers did? 
  • Why specifically has overall enrollment declined?  Are these declining numbers from MCS or SCS?  Why are parents choosing private, charter, option and home-schooling instead of enrolling their children in MCS or SCS.  Why are parents moving to North Mississippi, Fayette and Tipton Counties?
  • What are ASD schools? 
  • Why are more parents choosing Charter schools?
  • Why are more parents choosing Optional schools?
  • Wouldn’t it be better for the kids to have more Optional schools where parents could choose what school their child goes to?
  • What is the CLUE program?
  • What is the CAPA program?
  • What is the projected per student cost for 2013 - 2014?
  • What was the per student cost in SCS?
  • What was the per student cost in MCS?
  • Much of the input last night ~Feb 5, 2013~ was from Optional school teachers, parents and students who didn’t want funding for Clue, CAPA, and Optional programs cut.  Where are those cuts outlined in the budget?  I see where Music, Art and PE are cut in elementary, but I don’t see where the other cuts they were talking about are. 
  • What does the term “Elementary MAP” on the Description of Staff Model slide #24?
I think as parents, citizens and taxpayers of Shelby County, we are due some answers.  I believe that the reason that the MCS surrendered their charter was because they weren't getting the job done with the amount of money that they were given, so to get more money, they wanted to force a merger with the more successful Shelby County Schools.   Since the courts have shut down the municipality schools for the 2013 - 2014 school year, I think it's imperative that all of us in Shelby County get involved and help the School Board find some common sense solutions.  We know how to balance our home and business budgets, we should be able to help the School Board stretch every dollar that they receive from us taxpayers.

Update:  I did find this link concerning Choice Transfers.  What I'd like to know is how common are they and what criteria do they really use to approve Transfers?.  

Friday, December 31, 2010

Why not try something New?

With all the brouhaha over the MCS board voting to surrender their charter, why not use this as an opportunity to try something completely new; school vouchers. Why don't we empower the parents that do care and bring competition back into the equation? We already have proof that it works. SCS spend $2K less than MCS per child; yet SCS have better schools. I haven't seen anyone touting the success of MCS; just complaining about SCS being better. SCS already has a problem with kids who live outside the district going to their schools. Why is that? Why not give each parent a voucher for each child. They can then use that voucher to enroll their child in the school of their choice. The schools would then have to compete for students, instead of having a monopoly. The schools would be better. They would start coming up with solutions for educating the children instead of being complacent because they know that they won’t be able to keep their job if their school doesn’t attract students.

Just a thought. . .