The City Council is doing that last-minute fix lately and you wonder why they didn't think of all this before now, if it's a legitimate finding. Is somebody holding out? That seems to be the suspicion on the part of the students and certainly, on the part of the teachers union. Any "finding of a solution (money)" just works to make you more distrusted later. Again, it's the question of "Are you SURE you aren't holding out on us?"
There's only a certain amount of money that they will have that has to last for a while and using it all for preserving teacher jobs over other employee jobs will still get them to the end of the money sooner and with more of a deficit than now.
I am not in favor of students losing time in school for matters that belong to the adults to sort out. If there was not a conflict between losing school time and expressing student opinion, then I would not be so firmly against them acting. Teachers need to see the responsibility to have the students educated as much as they can, which many people believe is not happening even without the layoffs in the picture.
A part of the story demonstates the concerns that may not be apparent to students.
Santee student organizers threatened to boycott state testing next week. Most
testing has been completed at schools on a traditional calendar; Santee,
however, has a year-round schedule, and for two-thirds of the school, testing is
scheduled to begin Tuesday
Student performance on tests is already in the dumps and this does nothing to show what productivity if any is coming from the particular school, and with that poor performance, the teachers will also take heat for that. It just makes for one negative domino hitting another negative domino in the line for a chain reaction to more disappointing performance at the end.Santee student organizers threatened to boycott state testing next week. Most testing has been completed at schools on a traditional calendar; Santee, however, has a year-round schedule, and for two-thirds of the school, testing is scheduled to begin Tuesday.
These tests help determine a school’s academic ranking, and schools are rated on the participation rate as well as the results.
“I don’t know that our parents are going to condone a boycott,” said Principal Richard Chavez. “The test results that come back reflect on the students, the school and the community.”
The actual benefit to students is not a very apparent element here, and it looks like a source of more poor performance. You might notice in the story that the students do not appear to be kept in school, but allowed to go to Beaudry. If they were going anywhere just to get out of school, would the District condone this? Where does it draw the line.
And what about harm coming to the students out of school? If there was any traffic accident that nailed a student out of class on the way to the Beaudry headquarters with the District allowing or even chaperoning this, you could imagine some liability falling in the lap of the Board for allowing students to be exposed unnecessarily to the risk. With so many odd driving habits in the news, you might think it should be a risk not taken, at least not without some sort of release signed by parents or guardians beforehand- but like most things, the Board just hopes for the best and goes on about it's business, reacting instead of acting.
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