I heard on the radio this morning that tonight's Hazelwood West homecoming bonfire and pep rally have been cancelled due to adminstrative concerns over gang violence. How sad. This is just another reminder of a downward spiral that Hazelwood is in.
This school year has supposedly been an administrative nightmare for everyone involved. Hazelwood opened four new middle schools to ease overcrowding, but no new high school, especially up north with all of the new housing developments. Boundry lines were (seemingly arbitarily) redrawn and kids suddenly were pushed into new schools. Literally one side of my street goes to one elementary school and the other half goes to another. My neighbor, a 5th grader, was assigned to a new elementary school her last year before middle school. The busses STILL are not running on time. Kids are a half hour late to school everyday because they can't get it figured out. They pushed the middle school start time up to 7:15am to try to get high school bus routes back ontime. So 11 year old kids will be waiting for the bus at 6am.... in the dark.
A neighbor kid sat in an AP Chemistry class for three days in August without a teacher. Finally they figured it out: they didn't hire one. Oh, darn it... The kids' schedules were all screwed up--they were missing classes or lunches or one kid had three lunch periods or some peoples' schedules were completely blank!
Plus, the phone systems aren't working in the schools. Earlier in the year, there was a bomb threat so everything was under lockdown, school was released early.... and no parents could call into the school to see if everything was OK. Whoops, we never got those phones hooked up, did we? How important is communication, especially between parents and schools?? I guess not very. Oh, and there are major textbook shortages.
One good thing: there are actually people showing up to the school board meetings. The last meeting ran from 7pm to midnight because there was so much disgust and so many complaints from over 400 teachers, parents, bus drivers, and students. Hopefully this will be the kick to wake up the public to vote out the corrupt-beyond-all-belief-union-controlled school board driving Hazelwood, the 2nd biggest district in St. Louis county, straight into the ground.
My heart is literally heavy to hear about all of waste, corruption, apathy, laziness, lack of organization, etc. so laden in our schools... kids literally don't have a chance. And I am talking about a county school. I haven't even mentioned the St. Louis City school problem (officially unaccredited and taken over by the state this year). I hope that Hazelwood can receive a change of leadership and change of heart and mind to keep us from going down the same path...
Things like this boil my blood... and crush my spirit... like nothing else.
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4 comments:
While the administrative and communication issues are a major nuisance, the cancelling of the pep rally and bonfire have zero correlation from my standpoint.
The unfortunate rise of the "Black Mob" gang and "Knockout Boys" are not related, and I'd wager a larger problem. Total bummer for those students losing their rally.
I agree they aren't necessarily related. I just chose to share the updates I've received about my alma mater in one post. There are lots of problems, lots of sources.
Wow, I didn't realize it was so awful! My brother has been going to "alternative schooling" at the A.C.E. program, so I don't hear anything about anything anymore within the school district. That makes me so sad.
I'm hurt that you didn't welcome me to your blogger blog.
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