Northwest Indiana Discussion

Here are the highlights of the meeting:

All board members were present.

Special Presentation:

There was a Special Presentation on 2 differant reading programs in the SCH, Read 180 and System 44. These programs improve reading skills for the majority of the students who participate in them. Statistics were displayed toninght, showing the correlation between poverty, and poor school performance. The demographics include an entirely new classification called "Children From Fragile Families". This classification includes children who's families are at or less than the Federal poverty level, or are headed by single mothers.

Statuatory Meeting on the 2013 Budget:

A break in the regular meeting was taken for the 2013 Budget adoption. The regular meeting resumed immediately following.

Reports:

There will be a 1 year program implemented at the Area Career Center for Emergency Medical Technician. This new course will also give 6 college credits hours to the students who successfully complete the course.

Calender:

The next regular school board meeting will be on Monday October 22, 2012 at 6pm at 41 Williams Street.

Public Expression 2nd Session(no speakers 1st session):

Several Lafayette Parents expressed their concerns about an alleged petition being circulated to remove a person employed at the school. The parents said the allegations are false, and believe the person responsible for this petition has no reason to do this. They want this stopped. All the Parents spoke up for Lafayette and the Staff.
An Eggers Parent said that her child was approached by someone in a car, as they were walking home from school. She was quite upset about this, and had reported it to the proper authorities. She asked as to what the SCH can do about the safety of the children who have to walk home.

My take:

All the stats can be thrown at a problem to try to explain it away, but the responsibility remains with the parents. There is no good excuse, as far as I am concerned, that a child would be failing in school, unless there are genuine learning disabilities. Our schools are not supposed to be babysitting services, and the Teachers are there to educate the kids, not provide free child care. The parents need to accept their responsibilities. Poverty is a lame excuse. Many successfull people of today did not grow up in wealthy homes. The generation before us, went through the Depression. Failure was NOT an option then, and it should not be now. If a PARENT has to apply their foot to their kid's posterior to get them to do their studies, then that is what they have to do.

Your take once again is ignorance and stupidity.

Many successful? Show me the stats as a percentage of those that escape poverty? There are definite successes but they are minimal in the grand scheme of things. The successes are far outweighed by the failures.

How do you expect parents who are in poverty and most likely drop outs or under-educated themselves to be pro-active in their children's educations? There are some active parents, but it is very much uncommon.

The children that lived through the depression had the benefit of being able to gain employment and a lifelong career even when dropping out of school. It also had the benefit of most of the rest of the world's manufacturing capacity destroyed by World War II. Tell me how a under-educated high school graduate, or worse yet a drop-out, is supposed to make a living?

Involved parents would be great, only it's going to be very rare that it happens in lower income areas. So the school does need to take steps to potentially break through to a handful (they will fail in the vast majority of cases) and help them escape poverty and an under-educated atmosphere.

Tell me, is your solution to just write them off if their parents aren't involved?

And Matt, your solution would be? Throwing money at the problem does not get us better educated students. We have all these new schools and it has not improved our students test scores. How can a teacher teach without the parent making sure the student is in school everyday? How does a teacher teach when her/his student is sent to school at random, poorly fed and greatly unprepared? Whose responsibility is it to ensure that the student attends school on a regular basis? Just because you are poor does not mean you can't get a child off to school on a regular basis. Just because you're poor doesn't mean that you can't make sure your student's homework is done. You can take your student to the library for reading and computer work. It takes the involvement of a parent. A parent who wants to see that cycle of poverty broken will ensure that his/her child attends school, is clean and fed and prepared to get the best education! A teacher cannot do it all! It takes teamwork!!!

First let me say that I agree 100% that lack of parent involvement is the number one problem in our school system. I must also agree with Matt in that an under educated populace is a detriment to any city.

However the SCH has been able to operate under the radar for years. Including the entire time the elementary schools were being rebuilt. Yet I never hear JCMT or LALC or some others mention the impact that spending has on their tax bills.

Parental involvement is absolutely important and very lacking in Hammond. But it's also something you cannot mandate or legislate, and you cannot cast away children because their parents are unable or unwilling to be involved. They are at a HUGE handicap, and most will be doomed to poverty themselves. A VERY lucky few will be saved through steps, that do not make teachers babysitters. There are programs that are in place and should be in place that to help the kids. It certainly won't help all or most ..but some. You just can't cast them away.

Now Hammond absolutely overbuilt, but that was mainly because they ignored school infrastructure for the better part of 30 years. It's now been 10 years since most of the rash of schools was built and during that 10 years they have started ignoring infrastructure again.

Sooner or later there will have to be something done about the highschools no matter the band aids that have been put on them. Then it is time to build one mega school and ditch the 4 individual high schools. That time is probably coming soon, as other debts are paid off.

You've got me all wrong. There isn't a doubt in my mind that Hammond has more than it's share of incompetent, lazy teachers as well as incompetent, lazy, and wasteful administrators. I'm also sure that Hammond educators are just as tormented by those confounded absentee landlords with multiple illegal homestead exemptions as is the civil city. The difference is that, unless I am missing something, the teachers don't recruit nosepickers like yourself, the Pustule of the Region, the Jailman and other illiterate apes to try to justify the bungling of their patrons as well as of each other.

You try hard to use their missteps to justify the civil city's own poor performance as well. That is definitely a hallmark of LC Dems, especially those north of 80/94. As they march the 98th, 99th, and 100th Democratic elected official or corrupt municipal empolyee in front of a judge, you and the rest of the WDEM sycophants will be smugly saying, "oh yeah, but what about Charlie White, that downstate Republican?". He's the best thing that has happened to your sorry crowd in the past five years.

You hit the nail on the head ! Poverty is no excuse for not parenting.