Monday, February 7, 2011

Poor Schools Force Moms to be Criminals!

Convicted Criminal: Loving Mom Provided for Childrens' Future

YOU KNOW YOU'VE HEARD TALK LIKE THIS:

          Send them back where they came from.
     
          We don't like those types around here.


What would a mother do to help her children get a better education? Parents across the country ask this question as public schools continue to decline in their effectiveness whether it is falling academic performance, a climate of discipline that simply does not equal reality, the insane insistence on doctrinaire political correctness and institutional persecution of traditional religious beliefs, and a climate where bullying, drugs, and general decadence is all-too-often not dealt with effectively. Naturally, the worst of the worst are urban school systems with primarily African-American populations. The emperor’s new clothes phenomenon seems to be in control as nobody wants to state the obvious as the little girl did noting the emperor stood stark naked – urban public schools amount to institutionalized racism and child abuse.

While they still leave much to be desired, sometimes school districts as close as across the street in the next school district, municipality, or county might seem like heaven on earth compared to the squalor of dysfunctional failing schools. So what is a parent to do? How many families can afford to pick up and move or pay tuition for private or parochial school. There is no single factor that can elevate a person out of poverty better than an effective education and the continuity of failing urban schools despite numerous “reform” efforts and substantial efforts to dump money on the problem. The efforts fail consistently to reach the classroom level where ill-prepared and unsatisfactory teachers work with weak instructional programs, crumbling buildings, and a lack of instructional materials. From a child’s entry into these failing systems, sadly at the tender age of five or six years of age, his or her fate is sealed destined for failure not prepared with anything resembling a satisfactory learning experience.

Many parents take the situation into their own hands and falsify addresses and misrepresent requested data on school enrollment forms to get their kids in the much improved surrounding schools which they are shut out of by virtual of simply their residential address. How many of these parents might even work and shop in the superior district paying taxes to support those schools?

Many parents decide to break the law and jump boundaries. Such actions can even represent felonies in some districts. Getting caught will at very least get their children booted out of the better schools but parents can face legal action having to pay restitution for the cost of their student attending the better school or criminal penalties – fines or even jail.

The real crime is what the system does to our less fortunate children. Many states have by legislation or court order been forced to achieve financial parity between all school districts but still reform in districts like Baltimore, Detroit, and many other municipalities is hardly even an illusion. Occasionally a strong reformer will take charge, but between changing political leadership, union pressure, and bureaucratic largesse, such reformers don’t stay around long enough to produce results – case in point – Washington DC.

Here is the story of a real person convicted of being a criminal for lying about her residence to get her daughters in a better school district. Kelley Williams-Bolar, an Ohio mother who worked as a teacher’s aide seeking to become a teacher enrolled her daughters in a well regarded school system in the Copley-Fairlawn district outside of Akron where she lived. Her father lived in the better district.

The school district went as far as to hire private investigators who filmed Ms. Williams-Bolar driving her kids into the suburban district. She was assessed $30,000 and refused to pay leading to a criminal indictment and ten days in county prison plus a year’s probation effectively eliminating any chance of her future as an educator.

So what’s the real crime? Who’s the real instigator? Are there any conspirators? The true criminal is the Akron school system for failure to provide for its children. The co-conspirators include teachers unions and politicians who fight meaningful reform at every turn and have a vested interest in perpetuating the status quo not rewarding teachers for superior performance, setting rules and policies which foster a successful learning environment, and ridding the system of needless and ineffective bureaucrats and incompetent teachers.

Alas, who is going to help parents not have to make such a fateful decision becoming criminals for the good of their children’s future? Who’s going to indict and punish those who perpetuate such vulgar institutionalized child abuse?

That our society accepts such criminal behavior against American children is our national embarrassment and refusing to remediate it is grotesquely criminal.

REFERENCE SOURCE: http://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-mom-jailed-sending-kids-school-district/story?id=12763654



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