Tides of Change

So today is the first day of school for the kids. As a parent, I'm hopeful that they make new friends, learn new things, and generally have a good year at their new school. But for us, today is a milestone that is a little more significant than typical first days of school.

Almost a year ago, both our kids kept coming home from school in a bad mood. Not a typical bad mood, but seriously depressed. We asked both of them what was going on, and their stories were almost identical: the other kids in their classes were inappropriate, and their teachers had no idea what to do to keep everyone in line.

Granted, kids are kids, and they could have been just as much of a bother to the teacher and their own peers and could have just been giving us lip service, but we investigated and found that their teachers were relatively new to the gig and basically had no idea how to handle discipline problems.

Instead of singling out a bad student and isolating them, they would punish the entire class. Instead of rewarding good behavior and performance, they would ignore the good stuff and focus on only the bad. Instead of proactively reaching out to parents or other staff for assistance and behavior modification, they went with the status quo and treated the class as if it were an army platoon. Everyone had their collective benefits taken away (no recess, no free time, constant yelling), and everyone was shifted into the guilty category instead of seeing any sort of reward for good behavior.

Both kids were exhausted by the end of the day. They got good marks on tests and homework, and both kids always got good behavioral notes, but they acted as if they were being punished all day every day.

My son's first grade class seemed to be run by a group of three children, with the teacher doing all she could just to move the class forward by inches. My daughter's fourth grade class seemed as if it were a boat left adrift with barely a paddle amongst all thirty kids.

My wife and I tried to console the kids. We tried to advise them on things to attempt to get the other kids in line. Nothing seemed to work.

The district as a whole seemed to be flailing in failure. Test scores were at the bottom rung of the scale. Funding was being cut right and left. The public school seemed to cost more than private schools in the area, what with the uniform costs and the fees and the supply list to purchase every year. Seriously, the cleaning supplies they wanted every kid to bring in was enough to keep a whole house clean for six months... Why ask thirty kids to each bring in four large containers of Chlorox Wipes?

But we knew the thing that would help our kids quickest was to get the fuck out of there.

Now, there were other benefits to us moving, don't get me wrong. I'm a lot closer to where I work now, so my morning and afternoon commutes are a fraction of what I once had to endure. And now we're much closer to commercial areas where my wife can hopefully find a job while the kids are in school. But I believe the main meat of the move was to get the kids in a school where they wouldn't be victims of a beaten down drill sargeant trying to corral all the kids together in a boot camp.

And I understand that by moving out of the district, we could be seen as adding to the problem. Less kids in the area means less state funding. Less state funding means less money going to the kids. But really, why continue to pay for something that just isn't working? And I'm not just talking about money, I'm also talking about the future of my children. Why pay with their time for other kids who just aren't getting it? And the whole argument about public schools being a catch-all for everyone and that everyone must share the burden is bullshit. There could be classes separated by abilities and behavior. I went to public schools almost all my life and the best schools had different tracks available for high achievement kids. That district just didn't care, or was broke, or the governing parties involved just didn't get it.

I just hope our choice of venue was good, and that the kids can find peace and enjoy their quest for knowledge in this new school. If not, we can always move again.