LETTER TO THE EDITOR, Starley Craig, Liberal
Looks like someone shut the door marked “free money,” and USD 480 is moaning and whining about it. If the school engine could only recognize that the school is not composed of teachers, board members and administrators all dedicated to take over every job — only the education of young people.
With about $10 million cut off, the school might have to focus on objective concretes and let “emotional education” go.
By the way, Liberal won not only the 10 Worst High Schools in Kansas award, but also the “Emotional Education” prize as well. I’m not so sure emotional education would help students understand rising inflation (I asked a girl in a burger place what she thought of inflation. She had no idea what I was talking about. She was an LHS graduate.).
Let me tell you about three programs USD 480 has purchased in the past:
Self Image
This program was designed for K-12 and had a lot of exercises where the class had to pretend to be a flower or a dinosaur, or whatever. I never did find out what that was supposed to do for a child’s self image. It went the way of the buffalo.
Time Management
In this program, two teachers teamed up, and while one taught the other counted seconds not on task. I did it once. It went the way of the buffalo.
Assertive Discipline
This was a dandy little way to whip students into shape by writing their names on the board if they broke the rules. I never did it. Only one teacher in my school tried it. It resulted in his getting fired. It went the way of the buffalo, too.
There were many others, like finding out if the student is visually oriented, auditorially oriented or haptic, where info. was passed to the student via touching. Then, tailor your lesson plans for each kid. It was never tried.
There were beaucoup of those — hundreds of thousands of dollars kissed off. I figure USD 480 has bought 100-plus programs. If they worked, we wouldn’t have most of the students at the bottom of the bell curve.
Then we have two new employees whose job it is to deal with deaf students. How many deaf students do we have?
We also want eight hours a day for substitute teachers, who must have a GED. Wowza! What qualifications!
State or federal funds come from tax-paying citizens. It’s not free money. I’d even bet USD 480 is having trouble finding anything left to buy.
Insist on a book, a teacher, a schedule and a disciplinary system. If the parents won’t help or pay any attention to what goes on at school, then leave them out of it. I have noticed that when someone new gets on the board, it is only a short time before they are looking at ... more programs.
Stop it.
