Do people not care about their kids' safety?

One of the "rules" about kids coming to school is that they can come in car (with parents driving of course), on bike if they are 3rd grade and above and on foot, but not skates, skateboards or scooters. Not only do I see kids coming solo on the disallowed modes of transportation, but with parents. I'll see a parent walking with their kid, pulling a wagon or pushing a stroller and their older kid is on a scooter or skates. To add to this, the parents are not chewing their kids out when the cross streets without stopping or even looking to see if cars are coming. Then there are parents who let their young kids, like first graders, walk or ride bikes to school solo. Do these parents just not care? I am pretty sure one of Sarah's classmates has been a latch key kid since 1st grade. His older sister who rides with him is just one grade above! I really do not think that elementary school kids are ready to go home to an empty house, but especially not until around 4th or 5th grade.

In other news, not related to school, they are almost finished painting our condo building. Monday all day, they were pressure washing the roof and sides of the building, and Tuesday and yesterday was painting and doing the trim. They still have the garages to do. The really funny thing is that we're getting a new door next week or the week after next. We are responsible for the door, so the HOA is unaware of this. I told the painters, but they're still going to paint our door. I'm just glad we didn't have the new door yet, because if they had painted over the new one, it would void the warranty. Ours will have a factory paint job on it and it will probably last longer than the stuff they are painting the other doors with.

Back to School Night

Tonight was "Back to School Night" at Sarah's school. I think most "normal" states would refer to this as an open house. There IS something called Open House at the end of the school year where the whole family is welcome and the students' best works are on display. Back to School Night is a parents only event, though some parents ignore that request and bring their kids. This year they even had the yard duty supervisors present so the kids could come and play on the playground while the parents went into the classroom, but some parents STILL brought their kids into the classrooms. I left my kids home with my husband, as I do every year.

Over the weekend, big changes came about at the school. There were too many first, third, fourth and fifth grade students for the number of teachers based on class limits. I'm not sure of the limits for 4th and 5th, but the lower grades max out at 20 students. The usual solution is to have a combination class. They ended up hiring a new teacher and she took on a 4th/5th combo class, which meant kids had to be moved and lots of parents were NOT happy. Sarah is in the 4th grade this year and was not moved. I am grateful for this, because she had been in a combo class last year and I feel that it was "someone else's turn," if that makes sense. The thing is, they try to get the kids who are not behavior problems and generally work well on their own. Sarah definitely fits into this category. A teacher could not "do" a combo class with a lot of behavior problems going on. The problem with the other group of kids that needed combo classes is that they were first and third graders, and you don't really mix up kids unless they are one grade level apart, NOT two grade levels. So, they created a 1st/2nd combo class and a 2nd/3rd combo class to fix the situation with the 1st and 3rd grades. Lots of kids and parents were upset, but in the end, it all worked out. I was talking to a 5th grade student who got put in the combo class with the new teacher, and she seems to think that the new teacher is pretty nice. The problem is that she wasn't present at back to school night-- maybe she had a prior engagement. I'm sure the parents were hoping to meet this new teacher, and weren't too thrilled when it did not happen.

I can see that this will be an interesting year....

First Blog!

This is my first post to this blog. I'm kind of starting it as a place to vent about the frustrations of being a parent of a kid in elementary school in California. There is not much funding for education here, therefore, the schools just aren't that great as compared to other states. I have a daughter in the 4th grade and she's been at the same school since kindergarten. Her name is Sarah. I also have another non-school aged child named Julia and she is 3.5 years old. I guess my biggest problem is that there is such a lack of funds that we have to have all these fundraisers. The only reason our school even has a PE teacher (part time teacher, one PE class per grade per week) is because of all these fundraisers. There are no art or music classes at all.



This is really sad, considering that California schools used to set the trends for schools in other states. Now the schools in this state consistently rank 45th (or higher) in the nation. It is a goal of mine to be out of this state prior to my oldest started 6th grade in 2 years, and at that time, my youngest will be kindergarten aged.