Capitol Fax: Illinois school district that called police on students “every other day” agrees to reform disciplinary practices

 I read through this and found this interesting. Should police be called for disciplinary issues at school?

This district is in downstate Illinois and it's a small district and often has far more arrests than they have students.  I may also recognize that many of these students come from backgrounds that isn't exactly conducive to better behavior.

What makes sense to me is that a school should be equipped to handle behaviorial issues and not have to rely on police to intervew.

Illinois school district that called police on students “every other day” agrees to reform disciplinary practices https://t.co/qdAaZkBTng

— Capitol Fax (@capitolfax) September 6, 2024

Via CapFax

Peter Santello: Breaking hood mindset, Jackson, MISS

 

[VIDEO] Tommie Mabry meets with Peter Santenello as he sees the real story around Jackson, Mississippi - the state capital. Mabry went to Tougaloo College and graduated with his undergrad and graduate degrees.

The lesson here is what does it take to turn around a depressed area? Are the people in depressed areas, depressed? How do we change the depression?

Another thing to look at is if we aren't exposed to new possibilities, how can we realize them? Say if you lived in an area that seems run-down, are you still able to see yourself living in a suburban area that is well maintained.

Oh and for those of you who are college minded. When Peter and Tommie tour Tougaloo College they meet with the school's provost and they talk about college financing. If you join an honor's society Phi Theta Kappa (ΦΘΚ) you can earn a scholarship. Do your first two years at a community college - or here in Chicago the City Colleges - join ΦΘΚ and possibly get a scholarship for your last two years at a university.

That should be motivation for those of you trying to figure out how to pay for college and getting your associate's degree shouldn't be that expensive. ;)

Think about it! 

Humiliating: Gen-Z can't answer basic questions

 

[VIDEO] Wow! These young people can't answer questions about basic history, math, money, or even geography. Some of these aren't that hard.

• How many stars are on the US flag?
• How many states are in the US?
• What is the capital of Chicago
• What state is Utah located in?
• How many dimes are in a dollar?
• How many minutes are in a quarter of an hour?
• If you travel 60 MPH how far do you travel in an hour? Honestly this would vex me.
• Who fought in the Civil War?
• What year was the US founded?
• What countries border the US?
• Name three countries.
• How many seasons are there?
• What is 3x3x3?

I think this is a representative samples of questions and many of them couldn't even come close to the right answer. Only one question on this list could someone adequately answer which is the seasons. Again not difficult questions, but these young people of varying ages - some of these surely are in high school and others much older - can't answer them.

What have our schools been teacher these young people? How does a geography question quickly become a history question? How can one girl easily identify the Kardashians instead of being able to answer these questions?

I see one young lady carrying around a pride flag but she has difficulty with these questions. I don't care if she's into that what I do care about is if she's adequately educated. I might care if she knows the value of the dollar she might use to buy things.

The implication here is to ask whether or not these young people are adequately prepared for the real world. It seems they're not....

The mad-mad-mad-mad world of niche sports....

 I just wanted to share this article. There are some parents out there obsessed with getting their children into a top tier college. They're getting them ready early, but then do children not deserve their childhoods.

I don't have children but I don't mind they get involved with sports, however, my hope is that they enjoy playing and they should decide if they should do this for their livelihoods or to get into a top-tier school.

This quote kind of grinded my gears a tad:

On paper, Sloane, a buoyant, chatty, stay-at-home mom from Fairfield County, Connecticut, seems almost unbelievably well prepared to shepherd her three daughters through the roiling world of competitive youth sports. She played tennis and ran track in high school and has an advanced degree in behavioral medicine. She wrote her master’s thesis on the connection between increased aerobic activity and attention span. She is also versed in statistics, which comes in handy when she’s analyzing her eldest daughter’s junior-squash rating—and whiteboarding the consequences if she doesn’t step up her game. “She needs at least a 5.0 rating, or she’s going to Ohio State,” Sloane told me.

What's wrong with Ohio State? Why this pursuit of an Ivy League education? Don't get me wrong if you get in you're set, however, there are plenty of great schools to attend out there - like Morehouse for instance. :P

Another quote from this article I found:

In 1988, the University of California sociologist Harry Edwards published an indictment of the “single-minded pursuit of sports” in Black communities. The “tragic” overemphasis on athletics at the expense of school and family, he wrote in Ebony magazine, was leaving “thousands and thousands of Black youths in obsessive pursuit of sports goals foredoomed to elude the vast and overwhelming majority of them.” In a plea to his fellow Black people, Edwards declared, “We can simply no longer permit many among our most competitive and gifted youths to sacrifice a wealth of human potential on the altar of athletic aspiration.”

Thirty years later, in a twist worthy of a Jordan Peele movie, Fairfield County has come to resemble Compton in the monomaniacal focus on sports. “There’s no more school,” a parent from the town of Darien told me flatly. (She, like Sloane and several other parents, did not want to be identified for privacy and recruitment reasons.) “There’s no more church. No more friends. We gave it all up for squash.” She says she is working on a memoir that she intends to self-publish, titled Squashed.

This article went from obsessions of college admissions to obsessions with sports. I guess families have their obsessions with getting what's best for the young people. 

Parents, what's your read on this?

h/t Newsalert

Tribune: Chicago police arrest 13 people after tents are set up outside CPS headquarters to protest officers in schools

It seems the demonstrations continue as far as protests with regards to having police officers in school. And it seems that there was a clash involving tents at Chicago Public Schools HQ - 42 W. Madison St.

More than a dozen people were arrested, including two minors, after protesters set up tents outside the Loop headquarters of Chicago Public Schools on Monday to protest the stationing of police officers in schools.

Police said they gave protesters several warnings that the tents outside 42 W. Madison St. were blocking the streets. Those arrested were charged with “illegally obstructing the roadway,” they said.

The protest was the latest call by activists for the removal of Chicago police officers in Chicago public schools. It came days before the Chicago Board of Education is to consider a resolution that could phase out use of officers.

The resolution, up for a vote Wednesday, would “require that the CEO and district leaders, in consultation with school communities, identify and recommend an alternative plan to ensure safe and supportive school environments.”
...
Monday’s protest drew about 60 people and was organized by the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Assata’s Daughters, FYSH Youth — HANA Center, STOP Chicago, KINETIC Youth — Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Logan Square Neighborhood Association and Enlace Chicago.

Tweets contained from the write-up at the Tribune

Your Daily Dose of Internet!

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[VIDEO] Here's your Daily Dose of Internet. Today's video starts off with a landslide in Norway that took out an entire neighborhood though people were able to evacuate in time so no one got hurt. That and other videos of an entertainment, scientific, newsworthy or informative interest.

Enjoy and hopefully you learned something new.

A Train Odyssey 5...

Youtuuba plays with his old model train set in this video. He noted that it would be during this time he would take a train trip for our enjoyment, however, with the current restrictions due to the coronavirus it's not possible right now. Instead we see him run his model train around on his layout in the first video and in part two he shows off the cars of his trainset and the rest of his equipment such as track, switches, and controllers.

I just like the fact that he jokes that the engineer of that train might need to be retrained. Also there was a derailment in this odyssey, of course thankfully no derailment of a real train. Also a trick I might have tried once was intentionally derailing a train by flipping a switch at the right time.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. I was almost tempted to pull out my model trains running them around a Christmas tree although we're a long way from the holiday season.

A Train Odyssey 5, Part 1: A Special COVID-19 "Lockdown" Excursion [VIDEO]

A Train Odyssey 5, Part 2: The Vintage Marx Train [VIDEO]

An 8th grade autobiography project

Literary terms

Before graduating from the 8th grade at Bennett Elementary one of our graduation requirements was to write our autobiographies. This was in addition to the constitution exam and the basic skills exam. To be honest I'm not sure if this was something required by Mr. Z - my 8th grade teacher - or if this was something required by Bennett School itself.

I do remember that I just had little clue as far as what should go into an autobiography. There wasn't much guidance as far as what to do with this assignment. As was common practice back in those days I never really sought out any guidance or direction for this assignment. As a matter of fact after having turned in a rough draft under threat of flunking, I definitely did get the editors treatment from Mr. Z as he threw the first few pages he didn't like into the trash can. OUCH.😠

Either way my autobiography back in the 1990s was written by pen on a thick stack of notebook paper. It never occurred to me to type this on a computer and then print it off. Bennett School at the time had a wonderful computer lab on the third floor with either IBM or IBM clone PCs. As a matter of fact it wasn't common for any of us to have used a word processor on a computer to complete this assignment. It's interesting how times have changed where computers have become a common appliance not just at school or work at home also. And we carry a computer with us now whether a laptop, tablet or even a smartphone (Android or iPhone).

I just had to include this video of a dot-matrix printer that was very common over 20 years ago in computer labs. [VIDEO]

What this means is that as cringeworthy as my autobiography was written as an 8th grader many years ago, I never saved this to a floppy disk or any hard drive at all. For all I know my handwritten copy had been filed away in a cabinet for years only to be forgotten about. Or it's probably been discarded long ago and admittedly I haven't thought about that rather groundbreaking piece of  literature in years.

To be honest the focus of my autobiography at the time was school. I don't think there was much talk about what happened during the summers other than those three occasions I had to attend summer school or the holidays . I'm sure there was some mention of issues with fellow students or some authority figure at school. I do think that whatever was written by me back then was just plain cringeworthy. Perhaps this would be a very difficult read for me now.

I wonder if Bennett students before they graduate are still required to write their autobiographies. As much as I hated that assignment back then, perhaps one piece of guidance for today's students is to take stock in their lives as it is at that point and be as creative as possible. Perhaps they can still use that computer lab on the third floor.

#ABeautifulDayMovie Thumbs up :)

I saw the Mr. Rogers film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhoood on Friday. It was actually based on a long ago Esquire magazine article about Fred Rogers.

This movie gave me a greater appreciation of Mr. Rogers' contributions to children's entertainment. As stated in a post back in August on this blog where he was shown in a segment on Late Night w/ David Letterman I truly believe him to be a very genuinely decent man. Rogers ended production of his long time public TV program Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in 2001 and died in 2003.

Not a huge spoiler but a segment seen on Late Night before Letterman introduces his guest was a scene in this movie. It depicted Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers attempting to set up a teepee on the set of his TV program. It also depicts the journalist assigned to interview Mr. Rogers. Hanks truly did this iconic personality justice.

BTW, another scene depicted in this film was Mr. Rogers' appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show. You may have also seen that in the David Letterman post.

I have to admit it never occurred to me until watching this movie that Rogers has some eccentricities going on in his personality. Then again as a genuine person as I do believe he is, I have more respect for him now. I just wish today's children can see his awesomeness on TV again.

Also, I wanted to leave you with this article sharing 15 heartwarming facts about Mr. Rogers from MentalFloss.com. Fascinating look at a man who was part of so many childhoods

Here's a trailer for the movie that''s out in theaters now! [VIDEO]

ABC 7 Chicago: CPS students can begin applying to elementary, high schools for next year Monday

One of my own regrets from my time in the 8th grade is that I never got a real grasp of CPS' process as far as which schools I could attend and what programs they offer. Often I was dependent upon my parents or even my teacher. It seems like a nifty process students have to be able to chose where they can go to school.

Hopefully today's students take advantage and of course do their "due dilligence" on those schools and programs of their choice.

Visit go.cps.edu

For pre-k programs chicagoearlylearning.org.

Stossel: Let charter schools teach

[VIDEO] John Stossel who I remember was something of a consumer advocate on teh ABC News program 20/20 and later joined FOX Business channel with a program highlighting the philosophy of libertarianism has been producing these short videos for Reason. It continues his work in the broadcast media as he continues to take on libertarian subjects.

In this most recent edition he takes on charter schools. Charter schools are in a number of urban school districts around the nation. Although these schools take public money they can be run like a private school. In this case Stossel looks at a charter school out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania called Boys Latin.

The question is whether or not allowing parents a choice as far as who educates their children a choice. Should they be able to chose a public, charter, or private school? Another issue touched upon is whether or not a public school district wants increased competition from these charter or private schools.

WBEZ: Teens Say Free CTA Rides On First Day Of School Are Not Enough

Usually on the first day of school students and their parents will ride CTA for free. Some students say this still isn't enough.

Students say it’s helpful, but they want the offer year round.

“I think students should get free rides because I don’t really know how you will expect youth who are focusing on their education and career to have constant money,” said Jennifer Nava, a senior at Kelly High School in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

It’s a big ask in a city dealing with a huge financial deficit. Just last week, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city faces a projected $838 million budget shortfall next year.

Still Jennifer, an outspoken teenager who keeps close tabs on city affairs, wants to remind Lightfoot that she promised to make transportation more affordable for students during her campaign.

“If time is not now, then when?” Jennifer said.

How about this, create a U-Pass program for K-12 students especially designed for those students who must depend on public transit. If there isn't enough money to allow free rides for CPS students year round then do what the city's universities have done, require activity fees. Probably not a popular solution, however, as stated in the article the reduced fares for K-12 students add up.

16,000 homeless CPS students

That is a sad statistic and helps me recognize the many issues that CPS students bring with them to class. I can imagine there are those who are embarrassed by their circumstances, however, all they have to do is reach out.

From today's Tribune:

Students in temporary living situations rarely self-identify, according to advocates. Lockett, now 22, said he didn’t like his classmates and teachers to know he was homeless. But his situation is hardly unique.

More than 16,450 Chicago Public Schools students didn’t have a permanent home during the 2018-19 school year, according to numbers released Thursday by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Most were in temporary living situations, meaning they stayed in shelters, motels, cars or, in about 90% of the cases, “doubled up” with others, according to the coalition. Doubling up doesn’t generally meet the federal government’s definition of homelessness, so people in those situations don’t qualify for federal programs for those without homes.

About half of the city’s homeless students were in 10 of the city’s 50 wards, according to the coalition’s data. At least 865 were believed to be living in Ald. Walter Burnett’s 27th Ward. Burnett spoke at a homeless coalition news conference Thursday at City Hall to plug a proposed increase to the real estate transfer tax on properties worth more than $1 million to address the situation.

“We need to put the people first," Burnett said. “We need to help the needy and not the greedy.”

The advocates’ proposed 1.2 percentage point increase could generate about $150 million that could be used to reduce homelessness. The coalition said that’s 10 times as much funding as what’s already dedicated to the issue.

During her campaign, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she supported an additional tax on expensive property sales to direct more money to homelessness. But she has also said City Hall is on a different timeline than the homeless coalition. And she’s also suggested raising the transfer tax to help fill this year’s budget hole.

The coalition wants a referendum on the tax increase on the March ballot.

Fred Rogers on "Late Night w/ David Letterman"

[VIDEO] This clip combines two TV legends. On February 17, 1982 on Late Night with David Letterman had as his guest a PBS personality Fred Rogers of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. On this program Rogers had brought with him not only a t-shirt featuring the neighborhood trolley, also his sweater and casual sneakers.

Some aspects of this interview I found very funny, especially the part where Rogers thought it wasn't funny that some radio DJ as a joke thought it was funny to teach children to use aerosol cans and lighters. As Rogers said incredulously that could cause a lot of fires. Even I had to laugh at that!

I just have to say it's hard not to like Mr. Rogers who died in 2003 and who's legendary program ended production in 2001. I got the sense from this interview and even the often comical late night show that he was truly a decent man. It's really hard not to like someone who is genuinely very nice although we don't really know how he is behind the scenes. I do think his personality is genuinely nice and his appearance on Late Night probably was a mismatch.

I have to admit that watching Letterman when he was host of this program and before he moved on to CBS to host The Late Show with David Letterman was something of a guilty pleasure before even getting out of grammar school. It's amazing that he only retired from hosting a late night talk show in May 2015. I used to love his viewer mail segments or even his man on the street segments or even those sketches he might have. Another highlight are certainly his sketches with Larry "Bud" Melman. I can't believe I even got away with watching his program realizing only years later that it was probably not something a child should be able to watch.

As it turns out while Letterman continued with Late Night from 1982 to 1994 this would be the only time Rogers and Letterman would share the stage. You might be able to see him on other late night programs. Would you believe he was even on The Arsenio Hall Show at one point... [VIDEO]

Block Club Chi: Boy, 11, On Life Support After Years Of Bullying At CPS Leads To Suicide Attempt, Mom Says

I'm really aching for this boy and his family. He made a suicide attempt as in on life support. Jamari Evans is way too young to be ready to take his own life, as he's really just starting off.

It seems after some extreme actions from his teachers - ideally the ones who really should do what they can to protect him - contributed to his current condition. It's sad that he wasn't getting the support he should've had. It's also sad that highers up with CPS didn't take what his mother said seriously until Evans attempted suicide.

It's strange that he was even denied a transfer from his elementary school. What reason was a transfer to another school denied. This story should be a PR disaster for Chicago Public Schools.

BTW, I find it quite sad that the events that caused this young man to attempt suicide happened at a school named for the father of Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson.

CPS schools are closed on Wednesday #Chiberia

Many were concerned, especially on social media and with temps going to very chilly lows CPS is cancelling classes on Wednesday.

BREAKING: Chicago Public Schools has announced that schools will be closed Wednesday due to sub-zero temperatures and potentially record-setting windchill values. https://t.co/IstgmNO2yh

— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) January 29, 2019

And here's the official word by the CPS' CEO

The safety of our students is the district’s highest priority. All afterschool activities will be canceled tomorrow, January 29th. All CPS schools will be closed on Wednesday, January 30th.

— Janice Jackson, EdD (@janicejackson) January 29, 2019

If you're looking for a warming center here's some information posted at The Sixth Ward. Feel free to call 311 to find one near you.

Opinion: Let’s quit brainwashing kids that it’s a college degree or nothing

I found this article on fb on Sunday and it leads me to some conclusions about what I should've done once I finally graduated from high school. And perhaps how I fared in the work world.

Why is it college or bust not only for some educators, but parents as well?

Back when I began teaching, I seldom saw the students who were uninterested in the academic journey for a four-year degree. For they were the ones who had acquired internships, started apprenticeships, or took jobs in industry and manufacturing, as the culmination of vocational education programs in high school.

But these days I’m seeing more students with William’s dilemma, who are funneled to my classroom for lack of better options.

They are told by their high school counselors that they will not get a decent job without a college degree. And that high school qualifies them only for a low-wage job in the fast food industry.

Parents have been even more sensitive to the counselors’ warnings. So even when students found they enjoyed working in the building trades, or had a knack, say, for auto repair, their parents saw vocational education as a dumping ground for below average children: Not my child!

When I graduated from high school I never held a job. Sometimes I wonder where I'd be if I had learned a skill - especially a business skill such as accounting or bookkeeping - so that I could be employable even if college was my journey. I feel as if my career would've been better off without the thinking that college would make everything better for me.

In some respect I was like William. While I think my grades at Harlan was such a fluke that quite a few in my family expected me to to do well in college well it took me some time to finally get my degree. But either way, even if college was my path what if I had some other things going even as I continue to study. I still wonder about that now.

Let's continue:

In Chicago schools, vocational classes have been severely reduced, and schools and programs entirely dismantled over the past two decades. This is bad news for students like William, and bad news for the city as it competes for Amazon’s new headquarters, which comes with 50,000 jobs, many requiring not college degrees, but vocational education.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 68 percent of high school graduates go to college. This means that absent vocational training, 32 percent of our young people are unqualified for a job with which they can lift themselves out of poverty.

Of those who do go to college, 40 percent never finish, including William, who dropped before the end of the semester.

How to solve this problem?

We need to debunk the inference made by parents that vocational and technical jobs are inferior. Such a notion has led many of them to steer youngsters unwilling or unsuited for academic study into frustration, failure and depression.

College isn't for everyone, and tuition around the country has gone up. That means many students and their families are scrambling to pay for it. That means student loans you must pay off once you're out of school, and many of these students once they start working will have a hard time paying those loans off. This means perhaps we need to have an honest discussion with our young people about what they want to do once they graduate from high school and push them from there.

Report: Chicago Public Schools 'failed to recognize' extent of systemwide sexual abuse problem

We've seen a lot about this in the last few months or so. The allegations of sexual abuse and in some instances prosecution of them. This report well who knows if there is a lot of surprise over this:

Broad failures at all levels of Chicago Public Schools kept officials from preventing and responding to sexual abuse suffered by students in the nation’s third-largest school system, according to a prominent law firm’s early review of problems documented this summer in a Tribune investigation.

The report by the law firm Schiff Hardin identified repeated “systemic deficiencies” in training, incident reporting, data collection and trend tracking that pervaded city schools, the system’s downtown headquarters and a school board controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Employees were not consistently trained on district policies and procedures involving sexual misconduct, according to the report authored by Schiff Hardin partner Maggie Hickey and released Friday. CPS also did not ensure that those policies were being implemented or that they were effective, the report said.

The report describes how understaffed and underfunded CPS investigators struggled to process reports of potential sexual harassment, notifications sent to the Department of Children and Family Services, employee misconduct allegations and altercations between students and staff — thousands of reports during the 2016-17 school year alone.

Hickey noted that the district’s incident-reporting software, known as Verify, “is almost universally viewed by principals as cumbersome and inefficient.” CPS is moving to a new system next year, the report said.

While this blog is named for a now closed former public school, it just has to be said. Another reason for confidence in public education to go into a negative direction...

h/t Newsalert

Pullman playground and gang truce....

I'm sorry to have not shared yesterday's playground building in Pullman - although I did note this over at The Sixth Ward earlier this past week. I also didn't know the story behind this though judging by the headline is more interesting than building this new playground.

I will share a tweet from the reporter of this story for the Tribune, Tessa Weinberg

On my last day at the Tribune, I went to the Far South Side where a truce between two rival gang factions has led to a neighborhood playground being built amid a newfound peace: https://t.co/2NePIfMM9Y

— Tessa Weinberg (@Tessa_Weinberg) August 11, 2018

But the playground’s foundation was really laid nearly a year ago when Sherman Scullark, a member of the Risky Road gang faction, rang Detective Vivian Williams’ doorbell.

Williams, who has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years — and has spent 23 of them working as a Chicago police officer — was shocked when Scullark came to her.

“I could see in his face that he needed to talk about something. And when I opened the door he said, 'Officer Williams, I'm just tired. I'm tired,’ ” Williams said.

Scullark was tired of the violence. The conflict between Risky Road and the Maniac Fours faction had been going on since Scullark was a young boy.

And it marred the community. Kids didn’t play outside. They knew not to go to the basketball courts or the gas station — both hotspots for shootings when rival gang members found each other across the 107th Street dividing line.

So Scullark asked Williams, who’s known as the neighborhood mom, to set up a meeting between the rival gangs. Williams agreed but needed approval from the district commander.

The next day, Williams got it. But Scullark beat her to it. He had already orchestrated a truce agreement.

He had approached his rivals on their block and let them know he wasn’t carrying a firearm. Then he told them how he felt. It turned out some of them felt the same.

They agreed to put down the guns, and the neighborhood has been more peaceful ever since.

“I said, 'You didn't even give me 24 hours?’ ” Williams said. “He said, ‘Now can you introduce me to Arne Duncan?’ ”

Duncan, the former education secretary under Barack Obama and former Chicago Public Schools CEO, is the driving force behind the organization Chicago Creating Real Economic Destiny, known as Chicago CRED.

Read the whole thing!

And here's a flyer for that recent event that I hadn't posted here.

Where are the Black male teachers?

Black men - I suppose this could be directed at myself - where are you? We need you in our classrooms for the boys. We need you to help them with their academic success.

UIC wants to help train and recruit Black male teachers. Perhaps it's a program who's time has come.

The University of Illinois at Chicago is investing about $1 million to recruit and train male elementary education majors of color to help spur black boys' academic success.

"This is not just becoming a teacher. This is becoming a leader."https://t.co/HlwjAP0XYw pic.twitter.com/n2D1sK8Deb

— Chicago Tribune (@chicagotribune) July 25, 2018

h/t Newsalert

BTW, I started this blog as something of an education blog named blatantly for one my old elementary schools. While the emphasis seems to have changed over the years it's still a subject of interest as I do believe a good education will lift people in more ways than one. I'm not just talking about getting a college degree, I'm simply talking about going thru K-12 and graduating with a high school diploma.

If I may share this video, it may show why I would support such a program. It makes me wonder if these are issues faced by many boys in the current education system. [VIDEO]