"Pologirl" <pologirl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:6012a4eb-a579-41e3-8969-6184dba77314@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The hard facts of life are that, if a child is sent to school without
> breakfast or provision for lunch, then sending the child home is
> unlikely to get them fed.
>
> A better option would be to provide a school breakfast as well as a
> school lunch.
>
> Pologirl
I think Stephanie's point is-where does it end? I spent 8 years teaching
in
schoolwide Title I schools, where the number of students who didn't
qualify
for free breakfast and lunch could be counted on one hand. There was a
program where students could take home backpacks of food over weekends.
There was a free after school program, and students who stayed late got an
after school snack and another, larger evening "snack", which was really a
sack dinner. We had the Health department come in and do physicals and
immunizations. We had someone else come in and do dental exams and
sealants.
The counselor and school based social worker constantly were arranging for
a
child to get a vison exam and gl*****, or hearing tests and hearing aids,
or
medical treatment of some sort.
We had uniforms, and if parents requested it, the students would be given
two uniform bottoms and three ****rts. We also provided socks, shoes and
underwear.
While parents were given a supply list, it was considered optional and we
weren't allowed to require purchase of anything. Most teachers stocked up
on
school supplies in the sale to supplement what the school provided,
knowing
that otherwise, we'd have nothing by December. When a bunch of businesses
donated a lot of surplus office supplies, teachers waited hours in 100
degree heat, outside, for the chance to fill a shopping bag, because ther
were never enough school supplies. Yet, usually it wasn't that there
wasn't
enough provided, but that the students would waste, abuse, damage, and
outright steal from the class. I'm not sure what a given child thought
he'd
do with a dozen boxes of crayons, but, yes, we had incidents of theft of
crayons, pencils, glue and the like.
Charity groups provided Christmas gifts to our students, and many of our
kids came in talking about getting gifts from Salvation Army Angel tree
and
other sources as well. Based on what these kids claimed to get for
Christmas, many of them got more than many of our teachers could afford to
get their own kids.
And there was always more being demanded. Later after school care hours.
Extended school year. Saturday school. More field trips, but not paid for
by
parents. Programs to send books home for students to keep. Reading
incentive
programs that gave away computers and bicycles. Test improvement programs
that sent playstations and Leap Pads home with students. Band instruments
and extracurricular music programs...all at no cost to the parents.
I admit that at times it made me sick. Not that the kids didn't deserve
all
the extras, but that, in so many cases, there was no awareness that these
were things that someone, somewhere had worked and paid for, and there
wasn't just an infinite supply. The children had a right to go to school,
and somewhere along the way, it had morphed into "if you're low enough
income to live in this neighborhood, you have a right to all this other
stuff, too".
I recently read a news article about the possibility of setting up dorms
for
homeless students or students "At risk" of homelessness in order to keep
them in school. I'm sure that if we'd had a dorm, we'd have had a lot of
parents applying to get their child in there.
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