Mamacita says:  I think our school are too big. Large corporations sounded good on paper; they meant all students would have access to the big laboratories, the college courses, the winning basketball teams, etc. Those things are true. For some students, they are perfect.

But ultimately, I think what large school corporations have done is eliminate neighborhood camaraderie and family time. Who has time to sit down to a family dinner in the evening any more? We’re too busy driving our kids back and forth to the school. Why don’t the kids walk? Because the school is thirty-six miles away.

It isn’t only fast food that makes our children fat; it’s riding everywhere because the schools are too far from the neighborhoods.

It used to be that almost every neighborhood had a school within walking distance. Now, even children who live across the street from their school must ride the bus because of insurance prohibitions against pedestrian students.

School function after hours? Even if their parents worked, students used to be able to walk to school for choir practice, ball games, etc. Not now. Some kids live a good hour’s drive from their school. And some kids who live across the street from a school aren’t allowed to go there because of busing (one of the stupider ideas of our time); they are forced instead to go to school a good long drive away.

A child whose parents are unable or unwilling to drive him/her to school in the evening will not be able to participate in the things that make school fun, such as choir, plays, programs, sports, band, etc. ( am still sickened by the father who refused to drive his son to the ratio station’s big spelling bee playoff because he wanted to watch a ball game and, dammit, he’d worked all day and was tired.  His son had to forfeit because he had a lazy father.  (Whenever I see this man out in public, even now, years later, the loathing almost blinds me.  Also, I didn’t vote for him or anyone else in his political party that or any other year.  Yes, this is ridiculous, but I don’t want to be associated with this man or anyone else who is associated with him.  He’s a bad, bad father; therefore, nothing else he says or does means anything to me.  Everyone and everything he touches is as worthless and bad as he is, by association.)  (Don’t ever piss me off.)

Why aren’t there very many members of the marching band any more? Because too many parents aren’t willing or able to take their child all the way back to school in the evening, or spend (sometimes) hours waiting in parking lots for the band bus to bring them back from an out-of-town function.

And while it is very, very true that many parents just aren’t able, for whatever reason (and some of the reasons are good ones) to spend that many hours on the road to school and back, it is also true that many parents just don’t care enough about their child to put forth the effort. They’re tired, and they wanna watch football, dammit, and the kid has no business in the band anyway, or anything else that bothers me after work. Dammit again, and where’s my beer.

Sure they’re tired. I was tired, but I spent what amounts to years, sitting in the van, waiting for a bus. Why? Because I LOVED my kids and that’s part of parenting. I took mine, and I took many of their friends whose parents didn’t love them as much as I loved mine, and I’m not taking back that statement.

(Those parents whose work schedule or health didn’t permit such things are an exception.) (Those parents who chose tv and personal relaxation over their child should be dragged out into the streets and shot, and their children given to GOOD parents.)

Ahem. The point is, more kids would be in better shape physically, and be able to participate in more activities, if they still had a neighborhood school they were allowed to attend.  People would know each other, and neighborhoods would be closer and friendlier, and parents would be able to let their kids play outdoors more because they would know that most parents in the area would be on the lookout for pervs and accidents and kids behaving badly.

My kids are grown up now, but whenever I see one of those parents who chose not to participate in his/her child’s growing-up years, who chose not to sit in the gym and watch them play, or sing, or act, I still want to wring their disgusting necks.  Ironically, most of these same parents miraculously found both time and money for sports and games.

My solutions? Some of you won’t like them.

Get rid of the huge consolidations. Bring back small neighborhood schools, with small class sizes and teachers who are allowed to TEACH, not just bring more money to a district by force-feeding children and banking on what’s puked back out.

How about making people pass IQ and EI tests before permitting them to reproduce?   (Just kidding, so don’t go all PC on me.)

Okay then. These two things should take care of everything: Decent Intelligent Administrators Who Care More About Students Than About Politics, and Parents Who Care More About Their Children Than About Their Own Personal Comfort And Habits.

I haven’t found any of the first, and very few of the second, yet. Have any of you?