Originally Posted by Cathy A
It doesn't seem hypocritical at all to support PS in principle even though you don't send your child to PS.

Cathy, I do agree with you when we are talking about a few kids being taken out for specific reasons.

Warning: What is coming is a total rant, based on my personal experience in my town and has nothing to do with you all!

I do see a real problem in our district. My very personal issue in my district is that everyone who can (middle class families) seems to be pulling their kids out of PS to put them in charter schools (which have clearly, in our district, been set up to only work for white middle class kids), private school (white middle class) or homeschool (white Christian conservatives). These are the parents who would be on the PTA or volunteering in the classroom if they were in PS. Meanwhile the public school no longer looks like our district in general. Poor single parent families, people just scraping by, and non-English speakers are typical in PS, but not seen at all in the private, charter and homeschool. Basically, it's segregation and I don't think it's fair. This is putting a huge financial strain in the district and hurting the quality of the public school system.

And this is my problem: most of the parents pulled their kids out, not because they were having problems, but because they were afraid that they might have problems or they didn't want their kids associating with the "people who live in trailers" (and yes I have heard people say this). I am not mad at any of you, but I am mad at my local friends, because I have seen our PS go down hill because the white middle class are proactively removing their children.

Thanks for listening!

Last edited by acs; 03/18/08 10:48 AM.