Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every year I see what a insurmountable advantage my kid has by having educated, comfortably well off parents. He's in 3rd grade and last week he had a homework assignment that had to be completed on a computer. What, your kid doesn't have their own computer at home? Tough luck! We're also already into 'projects' - more hours of work, more resources to buy. "oh you can do it with stuff around the house" (no you can't)…
Raspberry Pi are created for this exact purpose, and to think the school isn't giving everyone one to educate on basic computer science is beyond me. If you eventually learn trigonometry in math within the public education framework, I see no reason why people shouldn't be educated in more basic and practical things like computers.
California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
311–320 of 404 posts
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#312Unfortunately, the school systems still rely on one parent at home. It is not just drop off and pick up times: school activities, parent-teacher conferences, etc. For example, in the SF Unified District, school tours for parents of kids entering kindergarten, middle school and high school are during the school hours, mostly in the morning. It is all built around the expectation of a parent at home or a job structure…
"or a job structure that allows parents to have time off and not be penalized for it."
For this there's an easy fix: mandatory, with company-closing-fines-if-not-accepted, days off for employees for a number of school activities per year (with school provided documentation).
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#313Unfortunately, the school systems still rely on one parent at home. It is not just drop off and pick up times: school activities, parent-teacher conferences, etc. For example, in the SF Unified District, school tours for parents of kids entering kindergarten, middle school and high school are during the school hours, mostly in the morning. It is all built around the expectation of a parent at home or a job structure…
I can tell you that, through most of the bay area at least, those policies are mostly about intentional socioeconomic segregation. My family has deep ties to local education infrastructure and its well known that most of the advocates for these policies are trying to keep poor kids out of their schools. While they don't say it in public forums they're generally more than happy to tell you in private.
Even in My grandfathers day (Head teacher in WW2 era) all the poor kids left school at 14.
And only a few smart and lucky kids from better off working class families made it to apprenticeships and the really lucky ones Grammar school.
If I had stayed in Birmingham (UK) my mum told me they would have tried to get me into King Edwards and use Granddads Influence to help.
BTW this is The King Edwards that Tolkien went to and is normally in the top 3 selective schools in the UK
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
If kids get to bed around 8pm they will normally be up at around 6-6.30 plenty of time for most to get ready. But sure if they are put to bed at 9-10 then its going to be tougher.
So no sports or after school clubs? 8pm bedtime is great with no other obligations, but I was regularly at school events past then (lacrosse games, robotics, quiz bowl, etc.), so that schedule would have prevented me from doing a lot of things I enjoyed in high school
So they have plenty of obligations we are just very strict with when they go to bed which means that in general we don't have an issue with getting them to sleep.
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#315They had 2 classes shifts, a 7-11:30AM and another 1-5:30AM, depending of your grade and the school, it could be on the morning or the evening shift.
Edit: I forgot to mention that i live in a city with 80k habitants, a small-medium city. At the biggest cities here, like São Paulo, the kids usually have to wake even early to take the bus.
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#316Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s a 20:1 to 30:1 ratio so are you suggesting it’s better for 20-30 working, single parent families? Maybe the government should pay teachers more and pay less on defense and we’d have a more productive society.
I think lately western governments (other than the obvious example) have figured out that it's a much better short term play to simply allow immigration to boost the economy rather than longer-than-their-term ideas like education.
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#318Unfortunately, the school systems still rely on one parent at home. It is not just drop off and pick up times: school activities, parent-teacher conferences, etc. For example, in the SF Unified District, school tours for parents of kids entering kindergarten, middle school and high school are during the school hours, mostly in the morning. It is all built around the expectation of a parent at home or a job structure…
I understand the frustration, but I think it is absurd to expect teachers and school administrators (who are woefully underpaid, especially in the Bay area) to accommodate working parents by working extra hours just for the parent's benefit. It's a hard enough job as it is, what with the poor pay, large workload, dealing with entitled, helicopter parents and the diminishing societal appreciation for their contributio…
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying teachers don't deserve to be paid more, but I was surprised to see how much Bay Area teachers make. It's public info for public schools.[1] In Santa Clara County, with no experience, starting salary is $71000. It increases on a schedule each year up to over $131000. Honestly, the job security, structured pay, and 3 months vacation per year is a pretty darn good deal. [1] - https://www.santaclarausd.org…
My teachers in suburban Michigan had starting salaries in the $70ks... in 2007.
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/fbs/finance/salary/sched...
Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
"This one school network..." doesn't stop it from being an anecdote.
It does when it results are compared to the entire new york state and its consistently in the top.