Lakewood Public Schools - Slavery As Volunteerism

[Will Brown]

[quote="Diane Helbig"]The beginning, middle and end problem with this entire thread is that the news story had NOTHING to do with Lakewood. It was a story about Cleveland that BIll decided to make about Lakewood.

IMHO Lakewood has enough going on to add in bulls**t from someplace else.

I tried my best to stay out of this but it really chaps my ---.

How in the world is this thread helpful???????[/quote]

If you would read the original article, carefully, you would see that the proposal is to change Ohio law. Lakewood is in Ohio. It would seem to follow that the change would apply to Lakewood, unless we secede.

I value the participation of people, including parents, in activities like the boosters, but I'm not sure it would be useful in the classrooms. Not all parents are good people, so I think to protect itself, the board would have to do police checks before a volunteer could be allowed into the classroom. There is also a real question of educational competency; would we want a volunteer whose arithmetic skills are weak, or whose reading or writing are marginal, helping in the classroom? And if the regular teacher has difficulty dealing with a room of kids, is adding another person to be dealt with to that room going to make things run better? I know from my experience coaching that participation of a well meaning parent does not always improve the learning, much less participation by a parent who favors their own child.

[Diane Helbig]

The beginning, middle and end problem with this entire thread is that the news story had NOTHING to do with Lakewood. It was a story about Cleveland that BIll decided to make about Lakewood.

IMHO Lakewood has enough going on to add in bulls**t from someplace else.

I tried my best to stay out of this but it really chaps my ---.

How in the world is this thread helpful???????

If you would read the original article, carefully, you would see that the proposal is to change Ohio law. Lakewood is in Ohio. It would seem to follow that the change would apply to Lakewood, unless we secede.

I value the participation of people, including parents, in activities like the boosters, but I'm not sure it would be useful in the classrooms. Not all parents are good people, so I think to protect itself, the board would have to do police checks before a volunteer could be allowed into the classroom. There is also a real question of educational competency; would we want a volunteer whose arithmetic skills are weak, or whose reading or writing are marginal, helping in the classroom? And if the regular teacher has difficulty dealing with a room of kids, is adding another person to be dealt with to that room going to make things run better? I know from my experience coaching that participation of a well meaning parent does not always improve the learning, much less participation by a parent who favors their own child.

I believe it is now mandatory for volunteers to be fingerprinted - it's been going on all year. So police checks are happening. And I couldn't agree more about the challenges of having parents volunteer in the classroom.

In addition, the bill seems to assume that the parents just don't want to volunteer. While that may be true of some, there are a good number of parents who can't because of jobs, other children and parents they are caring for, etc. I can't imagine how penalizing parents who are barely making it with a financial penalty is ever going to serve the children.

[ryan costa]

at least they aren't getting drafted and sent off to fight wars at Gas Station 1 or Rice Paddy 3.