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Originally Posted by Flor Why don't you believe her? I lived in Oakland and volunteered in public schools and saw things like she described all the time. A high school with 2000 students and one broken down bathroom. . ..broken windows. . .no water, soap, TP, etc. Not enough desks, no books. Her description sounded right to me. I could not believe there were schools like that in California.

And Oakland is one of the school districts that was taken over by the state due to mismanagement.

 

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Originally Posted by Flor That's an urban myth. We;ve been without power for whole days (with the kids telling us all day long that they are supposed to go home after an hour). Our windows are tinted, so it is dark. My roomlast year had no windows. Why am I joining your argument? ?? I promise to stop!

That is NOT an urban myth. Not only have I been sent home as kid because power was out for more than an hour, so have my kids.

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I went to drop off my kids kids at school one day and had teachers telling us school had been canceled because the power was out with no ETA on when it would be fixed. And THIS was in 2003.

 

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Originally Posted by aniT Public school are paid X amount of $ each day that your child attends school. If your child is absent because they are sick they don't get money that day. This is why schools always ask that you try to bring your child in at least part of the day if they have appointments or what not. They still get paid for a partial day. Because of this, schools have begun fining parents when their children are out of school excessively. Generally the fines are for kids that are constantly cutting school, but I believe 100% that the fines are more about the lost ADA money than the schools generally caring about that kid. If it was all about caring, they wouldn't call and yell at parents whose kids are legitimately out sick too often.

It's actually not just funding you can fail NCLB if on the day of testing if there are too many kids absent. And I guess as the wife of a "sensitive" teacher, I won't speak for administration but all the teachers I know do actually care about students who miss too much school and those that don't. My dh's favorite erstwhile pupil moved out of his parent's home early spring semester and stopped coming to school my dh went to great lengths to get him back to school and make sure he graduated and got into college.

To be honest given how tight school budgets are I almost can't blame districts trying to protect what revenue they do get.

 

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Originally Posted by aniT That is NOT an urban myth. Not only have I been sent home as kid because power was out for more than an hour, so have my kids. : I went to drop off my kids kids at school one day and had teachers telling us school had been canceled because the power was out with no ETA on when it would be fixed. And THIS was in 2003.

Lucky them! We don't get off.

It is really bad when you had a computer or video activity scheduled for that day.

 

Our schools NEVER closed for power outages. Never. Oh, and we went two days with no running water. Disgusting, but the downtown admins kept saying it would be fixed in the next hour. What can you do? Leave the children unattended and go home because your "contract" says you can? Yeah, right.