California in trouble?

As you may know, I have spent the last seven years of my career in California; the last two as a Vice-Principal, experiencing enough social malaise to last a lifetime. I most assuredly have enough fodder to write a book or, at the very least, a screenplay/ script. While I was working in Utah as a teacher, I used to think it was unforgiveable to be paid so little, and to be so "disrepected" as a professional. Boy howdy, have my thoughts and priorities changed!

As I've joined the ranks of public school administrators in the largest welfare state in the Union, I have seen more waste, more abuse/ misuse of taxpayer funds than I ever imagined possible. (In fact, I could write another book just on Catagorical Fund/ State & Federal Program waste.) It's ironic to think that I came off my mission and started the Masters of Social Work Program at BYU, only to walk away because I saw horrible discrepencies with the State/Federal "Welfare" Programs, as compared to church "Workfare" programs I taught/ administered while a missionary in Argentina. It was during my 18 mos. there that I developed a love of teaching and working with those who had so little, but who were so willing to learn. To be sure, I was young and naive to believe that everyone would want to learn as much and work as hard as those campesinos did. After fighting with a professor or two, I purposefully walked out on the Social Work Program, because I saw its built-in flaw. Any system that gives out something for nothing will never be able to instill in its participants the self-respect needed to continually fuel their successes. So, I became a teacher and, eventually, an administrator. Fifteen years later, what am I doing? SOCIAL WORK.

Maybe what I'm trying to say is that while Utah has its problems, California has a lion's share of the same issues, in addition to others. In fact, these issues seem to dwarf those often mentioned about Utah. I tend to write/journal/blog as a way to de-stress from my job. I would like to share the following quotidian activities with you. They represent the not-so-out-of-the-ordinary days like today. I only wish that I were exaggerating as to what I did today:

1) Translated yet another attendance / disciplinary meeting into Spanish (I'm the only administrator at our site who can) for parents who flat out refuse to take the free English classes we offer. I beg them to, just so they can navigate in the same system as their children. Then I wouldn't have to keep reporting to the parents that: "Your child has been involved in messaging over MySpace, sending gang affiliated info, which has put your child's ingress/egress to school at risk." Or, "It would not only benefit your own employment opportunities to learn English, but those in your child's future as you help them succeed in school and, eventually, the community at large."

2) Signed my weekly batch of truancy letters and sent my School Resource Officer/ Truancy Cop on home visits to verify residency. It is more than common to have families fail to send their children to school until they hear they might be taken to court and their welfare check suspended. Yesterday, I had a discussion with Sadie Clark's mother who refused to attend 3 prior scheduled meetings with me about her daughter's truancy issues. She told me: "Go ahead and take me to court. I won't show. What are they going to do? Throw me in jail? Take away my food stamps? I have another baby on the way and 2 on SSI. I'm good, honey."
During the course of the last two years, I've had probably 2-3 dozen conversations just like that one.

3) Dealt with a student on student sexual harrassment case. "Teabagging" (definintion #2) Boys in PE class, who claim they learned it on the popular T.V program "Jackass", then saw their brother do it to his girlfriend while mom was watching and laughing.

4) Suspended two boys for a fight. One kid punched out the other beacause he passed around naked, pornographic pictures in class of a quite large woman--claiming it was the other dude's older sister whom he had sex with last week. (Turns out the sister part was a lie, and that the boy had simply ripped the pics off from his dad's stash of porn. Dad admitted he doesn't try to hide it from his boys.)

5) Cleaned up last week's case of four pre-teens "Sexting" during school hours. This is a "new" craze seen on the "O.C", "Gossip Girls", "Secret Life of the American Teenager" that you may have heard about? Some states are putting kids up for porn charges with this type of offense. (This was already happening on my campus last year. I suspended half a dozen kids and expelled two for engaging in this behavior.)

6) Suspended, and will eventually expell, two kids for posession of / furnishing marijuana & related objects. One kid was manufacturing roach clip prototypes in Art class, then selling them on campus. His friend (entrepreneurial business partner) brought the weed to school from his parents' home plantation. Sad, but I don't know how much longer schools can fight this type of behavior when Assembly Bill 390 could pass. Then maybe my job will entail dealing with 16 yr olds who are working through Heroin detox (like my colleagues at the high school)?

7) Followed up on a missing person's report filed on one of my 7th grade students who just returned to our campus from our Military Academy. Jacob Cole had been back to our school for one short week and had already been suspended again for instigating a fight and other related drama. Apparently he didn't want to return to MYA, because he ran away from home this last weekend. Subsequent phone conversation with step-dad tells me everything I need to know. He says: "Jacob should remain 'lost' for all I care. That boy can't seem to get it through his head that we refuse to play his game."

8) Finished off the day @ 4:00pm, calling the Rancho Cordova police for a school parking lot malay. Right in front of my eyes, on my live video camera monitor, I witness a drunk mother back up into one car, peel past another side-swiping it, then accelerate into a third, rear-ending it. She promptly sped off trying to flee the incident. Much to her dismay, I had the whole rumpus saved on tape for the cops and all her posterity. Sad part is, once the cops brought the woman back to the school parking lot along with her Special Ed. daughter, the student witnesses were already starting to mock the girl for her mother's delinquent behavior.

Well, that's all for today, but there will be more tomorrow -- just like it, I'm sure. I appreciate the chance to explain my earlier emotion. In my humble estimation, legalizing, allowing or enabling certain behaviors doesn't seem to help them dissipate or become any less prevelant.