Hello...and Goodbye

The Guidance Diva the other day made a very astute comment..."They can throw billions of dollars at schools for education but it won't do a bit of good until they fix what's going on out there."  "Out There," being the neighborhood, the culture where education isn't respected or desired, the culture where working isn't a goal because drawing a welfare check pays better, a culture invested with drugs, gangs, abuse, and alcoholism.  A culture where parents aren't being parents.

And where they hang up on the teacher who is trying to call them about their kid.  (Yup, happened again today).

In any case, it never ceases to amaze me how people don't seem to have a clue about the types of kids we see every day and how amazingly screwed up their lives are, mainly due to the grown ups in their lives who aren't acting like grown ups.

Case in point.

We got a new kid this week (part of the seventh grade infestation) who came from outside our county.  Seemed like a nice kid (although we had to have a conversation about sagging).  Didn't say anything, got to work, said "Yes, Ma'am" and all that.  No problems with him at all.

The second day he was here, Mr. Enforcer strolled into Mrs. Reading's class and asked to have him pointed out.  Apparently some of his records were catching up with him, and Mr. Enforcer wanted to be able to recognize this kid should his name cross his desk.

This is not a good sign.

The next morning New Kid was absent from my homeroom.  Mrs. Reading came in after the kids went to their elective classes and told me that The Principal had ran into her in the hallway and mentioned that the New Kid wasn't going to be coming back.  Apparently more of his records had arrived the day before and The Enforcer brought them to The Principal's attention.

And what they saw apparently scared the living daylights out of both of them.  As The Principal put it, "It made me sick to read."

Again, not a good sign.

So he's gone.  No one is really saying much, but he was a kid in foster care.  The Principal took one look at his file and realized that this kid had emotional issues and problems too big (and too scary) to keep him in school with our student population.  She called the foster parents (who had no clue about any of this apparently which is just wrong) and informed them that due to his issues that she was going to get him placed in a nearby school that serves severely emotionally disturbed students.  I hope she succeeds in this and that he gets the counseling and care he needs.

But really it all comes down to this.  The kid is twelve.  Twelve!  And his life is already so screwed up by the grown ups in his life that he's considered a threat to the normal school population.  He has been, according to The Enforcer, "completely let down on every level by every grown up in his life."

I wish people who had no business or desire to be parents just stopped breeding.