Here’s an interesting factoid from a 2010 issue of JCPS Parent Connection:
JCPS maintains a fleet of 1,200 buses to transport students who live more than a mile from school—more than 63,500 students every day.
We already know that Jefferson County Public Schools’ bloated transportation system siphons big dollars from our kids’ education even though the board of education and paper-pushers at Van Hoose Palace insist they really aren’t spending that much on transportation.
Feh.
District-wide forced busing isn’t just stealing money from our kids’ education.
Forced busing is stealing enormous chunks of instructional time from our kids, too.
The Jefferson County Board of Education knows it, the Van Hoose goons know it. You probably don’t know about it.
Yet.
Here is what’s going on with thousands of kids across the district: Everyday, plenty of buses deliver kids to their school late. Big surprise, I know. These are usually kids who receive free and reduced-fee lunch so they don’t proceed directly to class, they are served breakfast before going to their classrooms. If the bus arrives ten or fifteen minutes after the bell (7:40 a.m. for middle and high schools, 9:05 a.m. for elementary), tack on another fifteen minutes so they can eat breakfast. And I want these kids to have breakfast because it is the most important meal of the day. I mean that.
I’m not knocking breakfast for these kids at all.
It’s usually the same bunch of buses that roll in late, the same kids who are missing out on class time. What to do, what to do? Neighborhood schools would handily take care of this messy problem but that solution is too easy.
Don’t worry! JCPS cooked up a scheme so that every child in elementary and middle school pays a price for those late buses. It’s called CARE for Kids and Circle of Power and Respect. Before these programs were implemented, the kids who arrived late were the only ones who missed instructional time. They rolled into class when the teacher was already in the middle of a math or reading lesson. Well, now, that isn’t fair, is it? Why should the bused kids be the only ones who miss out on a reading lesson?
So, in keeping with the overarching theme at JCPS that diversity/forced busing is more important than a solid education, our kids in elementary and middle school get to squander the first thirty to forty minutes of class time as a quasi-waiting period for those busloads of tired and tardy kids.
In elementary school, the kids take part in CARE for Kids. That’s the tidy little social program brought to us by none other than JCPS superintendent Sheldon Berman that is really nothing more than a bunch of boogery kids sitting around a circle and sharing fascinating tidbits with their classmates like, “I went to Disney World for spring break”, “My favorite food is chicken nuggets” or “My cat had kittens last night and we named one of them Pork Chop.” That last comment would be considered an “emergency share” because of the student’s urgency to share the message with his or her classmates.
Yes, friends, it takes a doctorate from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education to create a program that the rest of us eggheads call friendly conversation.
There’s more!
In most middle schools, students on late buses used to shuffle into the cafeteria to wait until second period because the arrival of so many late students rolling into a class during first period was disruptive to the other students’ instructional time. That doesn’t sound fair! How can JCPS squander instructional time in a way that is more equitable? Well, they found a way to guarantee that EVERYONE in middle school misses instructional time – just like the kids in elementary school.
Most of the middle school kids now participate in a component of CARE for Kids called CPR. Circle of Power and Respect. This is not a joke. CPR, like CARE, serves as a quasi-waiting period for the middle school kids who arrive late and it forces every kid in the school to lose thirty minutes of instructional time. Do the math. 2.5 hours lost every week. 10 hours a month. Close to 60 hours per school year. That’s about ten days of school.
By the way, ten days is JCPS’ threshold for absences which kicks off a mailing frenzy of letters and warnings to inform you that your kid missed ten days or is about to miss ten days. Bad parent! Bad! Yet, JCPS is perfectly fine with squandering the equivalent of ten instructional days.
That’s a whole lot of time wasted on a programs that are in place to accommodate late buses.
That’s a whole lot of time that could be better spent educating tens of thousands of JCPS students.
Neighborhood schools, anyone?
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Read the entire document by clicking here.
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View the entire CARE for Kids booklet by clicking here or on the screenshot above.
Posted March 22, 2011 at 6:00 a.m.
Education Voodoo 