Are public schools really like this now?

[BrokenQuill92]

I think typically the teachers want a specific color and/or brand to make sure all the kids have the same things. It's tough being the only kid in your class who doesn't have the Star Wars notebook. (Or whatever it is that kids like these days I dunno)

That's what my boyfriend was saying, which is why the parents have to provide uniforms for the kindergarteners to wear; to ensure that one poorer kid does not stand out against richer kids who are wearing brand name clothing.

Yeah I remember in kindergarten me a little terror. I used to make fun of this chubby girl name Harley. "Harley's a fat-fattie! Haha! Ew!"

[vorlon13]

That's what my boyfriend was saying, which is why the parents have to provide uniforms for the kindergarteners to wear; to ensure that one poorer kid does not stand out against richer kids who are wearing brand name clothing.

I have mixed feelings about the concept. I understand the idea and I think to some degree it can be good.  Or at least cut down on unnecessary school drama. But I also think parents need to teach their kids not to worry so much about what other kids have/don't have.

I'm OK with singling out the Mormon kids for special abuse though . . . 

[vorlon13]

Neener neener neener!

Your prophet is a liar !!!!

[brewer]

I remember lists for supplies in grade school but not in Jr/Sr high. Ya got the list once you got to class.

[Seraphina]

When I went to school, I basically only needed to bring a notebook and a pencil.

My boyfriend raised a woman's child, because she considered him too troublesome to raise (he was almost done with high school when I met my boyfriend) and he considers my boyfriend his father.

So my boyfriend's "son" has kids of his own.  

This girl is starting her very first year of school, and the list of stuff she needs is ridiculous.

She needs baby wipes, paper towels, dry erasable pens, these items have to be a "specific" brand.

The notebooks have to be a certain color.

This is public school.  Wouldn't the school normally provide such things as paper towels and baby wipes and dry erasable pens?  

The only thing I can figure is that the school is depending on the parents to provide that which the school automatically should.

Ah, they can safely tell the school district to stuff their lavish lists of school supplies up their you know where.
When my kid started kindergarten, I diligently went to Target and bought all the supplies on the list the school mailed to me. Many of the items are very particular - like a certain brand of highlighter or certain sizes of items.

Then I found out that these weren't supplies for my daughter to keep in her desk and use during the school day, they were handed over to the teacher to do as she wished.
So I only buy a few things off the list that I know mu daughter needs and will use like a backpack and pencils. The rest like Kleenex, reams of paper and Clorox wipes can be supplied out of the teacher's or school's pockets. They also get a tax deduction for buying their supplies; parents don't.

In California, it is illegal to charge families for public educational costs. A family in my city sued the public school district a few years ago to get reimbursement for buying a long list of items that the district gave the impression that they must buy.
Now the district sends their long list of supplies to parents with a little side note - "purchase of these items are voluntary".

-Teresa

[The Grand Nudger]

When I went to school, I basically only needed to bring a notebook and a pencil.

My boyfriend raised a woman's child, because she considered him too troublesome to raise (he was almost done with high school when I met my boyfriend) and he considers my boyfriend his father.

So my boyfriend's "son" has kids of his own.  

This girl is starting her very first year of school, and the list of stuff she needs is ridiculous.

She needs baby wipes, paper towels, dry erasable pens, these items have to be a "specific" brand.

The notebooks have to be a certain color.

This is public school.  Wouldn't the school normally provide such things as paper towels and baby wipes and dry erasable pens?  

The only thing I can figure is that the school is depending on the parents to provide that which the school automatically should.

On the one hand, school funding has been cut - so they now depend on children bringing their own materials - on the other, our entire society has been bought by corporate interests...why does this surprise you?

---

Then I found out that these weren't supplies for my daughter to keep in her desk and use during the school day, they were handed over to the teacher to do as she wished.
So I only buy a few things off the list that I know mu daughter needs and will use like a backpack and pencils. The rest like Kleenex, reams of paper and Clorox wipes can be supplied out of the teacher's or school's pockets. They also get a tax deduction for buying their supplies; parents don't

-Teresa

Yep, we're faced with a choice.  Buy the good shit or let our kids get strep.  So we buy the good shit.  School starts next week....the wife and I are dead broke buying shit for four classrooms.  No thanks, strep.  It's a good thing we're here, because these other parents are poor as shit, and we know it, because they all work for us. The clorox wipes are just better. School still treats us like white trash, because we "aint from round here, so they don't know us". Yeah, Cletus, we know we aint from round here. : sigh :

I hate to have to pull my privelege, but when they sent a dcf fucker to my house last year rather than acknowledge that they have an opiod problem....at their elementary school......because my kindergartener ended up with somebody else's pills in her backpack, I lawyered right the fuck up and made them release a public statement at the county board level. Now they avoid questioning my spawn. It didn't have to be like this, it shouldn't be like this.

/done venting

[Homeless Nutter]

I have mixed feelings about the concept. I understand the idea and I think to some degree it can be good.  Or at least cut down on unnecessary school drama. But I also think parents need to teach their kids not to worry so much about what other kids have/don't have.

How is that supposed to happen, when we live in a society obsessed with what people have/don't have? Parents only have influence over their kids to a certain extent. When the kids start turning into adults, they tend to rebel against their parents and want to learn from their surroundings, their peers and media, about what's important in life. Sure - hopefully, at the end of that "journey" into maturity most of them settle on some kind of more-less reasonable system of priorities, that's not entirely based around materialistic envy, flashy colors and high sugar-content. However, that does happen over many years, most of which are (ideally) spent attending some kind of school.

And schools are a place where children are away from parents - often for the first time - and where they tend to exercise their independence. If you leave them unrestricted - they'll try all sorts of world-views and behaviors, many of them harmful to themselves, or to fellow students, before they grow up enough to realize they're being moronic little a**e-holes.

[henryp]

When I went to school, I basically only needed to bring a notebook and a pencil.

Same here.  But the quality of education, at least at the very good public school my kid is at, is so far beyond what I received in K-2 that I'm happy to pony up the 30 or 40 bucks a year to give the teacher what they need to do their job.  Could they do it for 20 instead of 40?  Maybe.  But the curriculum is so aggressive, that I'm on board with giving them the tools to do their job the best they can as easily as they can.  

And I imagine a lot of the brand stuff is immaterial.  If you buy Bounty when the list said Brawny, I doubt they send it home.  I know they don't particularly care at my kids school.

[The Grand Nudger]

It was total shock to me, sending me kids to school in rural redneckistan, that my k grade students were being graded and tested (silly me, I thought kindergarten was when they learned to love school...no consequences).  They flat out explained that it was tied to funding, and that grades, today, were being held to a standard one or two grades higher than we might be familiar with. When I went to k..it was a novelty that I could read. My sons are being harangued for not getting 4 syllable words.

Psh, 30 or 40 bucks a year.....lucky. We'll drop three or four hundred on every classroom, minimum. Who else will? Who else can?

[Minimalist]

What is happening to public education in the US is a national disgrace.

https://news.azpm.org/p/news-topical-edu...-shortage/

Why Arizona Teachers Leave: Pay Tops Other Reasons

Looking at data from 2013 to present, the study found that 42 percent of Arizona teachers hired in 2013 were gone within three years, and 22 percent left after one.

And make no mistake.  This is not an accident.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/deeply-unpop...education/

DeVos And ALEC In Lockstep In Trying To Destroy Public Education

Virtually everything you need to know about ALEC’s education priorities is captured in the group’s most recent Report Card on American Education. Here, “forward-thinking” states like Arizona reign supreme thanks to a ranking system that prizes freedom from the education monopoly above all. Arizona’s high school graduation rate may be a full 25 percent lower than my own adopted home state of Massachusetts (languishing at #32 on the ALEC scale), but at least students aren’t choked by burdensome homeschooling regulations. In fact, thanks to far-sighted lawmakers like Arizona ALEC state chair Debbie Lesko (ALEC lawmaker of the year ’16), young Arizonans can now eschew school for a buffet of “a la carte learning options,” paid for with pre-loaded edu-debit cards, a vision DeVos regards as a model.

This is the dumb cunt that the WLB put in charge of the Department of "Education."  What a fucking joke.