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.

Do I live in the Twilight Zone?

Obama topped a new Harris interactive poll that asked 2,634 Americans who they admire enough to call a hero. Participants named the heroes randomly instead of being shown or read a list of people to choose from. The poll was conducted online between January 12 and 19, 2009.

God ranked 11th, between Mother Teresa and Hillary Clinton. Of the multiple reasons participants gave to explain their choices of heroes, the ones most cited is, "Doing what's right regardless of personal consequences" with 89%, "Not giving up until the goal is accomplished" with 83% and "Doing more than what other people expect of them," with 82%. Also popular were "Overcoming adversity" and "Staying level-headed in a crisis."

In the first Harris Poll asking this question in 2001, Jesus came in first, followed by the Rev. King, Powell, John F. Kennedy and Mother Teresea. So, my big question is: have we really gone down this far during the last 7 years? If you sit around too long thinking about it, you could get really depressed. Or... perhaps we could make our own poll. I know a whole bunch of people who'd write in prophets old & new as well as current Church authorities. My second question is: how are those with little or no moral compass seen as heroes?

Obama joked last year at a roast that contrary to rumors, he was not born in a manger but on the planet Krypton. Apparently, (according to the Godless and stupid among us) Obama is even more popular than God or Superman (who didn't even make the cut.) Not that a ficticious character should make such a list at all, but if we are voting on "helping the general populace have a little more hope in humanity", we ought to SCRATCH Obama and write in Superman. No way Obama would look that good in tights and a cape.

Need I say anymore?

I definitely think that it's time...

I'd marry any man who dances like this...

Truth is, I've had a huge crush on Hugh Grant since "The Englishman That Went up the Hill and Came Down the Mountain."

Maybe it's his one droopy eye, his quirky sense of humor...who knows. What I DO know is that I want to marry a guy who isn't afraid of making a fool out of himself and who makes me laugh like crazy. Here's to dancing like nobody's watching!

My Typical Day

You gotta love teens and pre-teens. Being a former English teacher, I'd say we need to bring back mandatory debate into the Master Schedule. What happened to their persuasive skills? Sheesh!

Tough Lessons for an Administrator

Yesterday was one for the books. I got to the office by 6:45, trying to beat the early birds. (We don't start until 8:55.) Working quickly, my data analysis reports underway, at 8:15, I get a call on the radio...."Admin needed in girl's bathroom....a fight!" I respond to find two of my alpha females at each other's necks -- literally. It took myself, our In-House staff and the principal to clear all the girls out, and the rest of my a.m. to clear up the mess.

Two suspensions and parent meetings later, I return to my office to find my campus security guard with three 6th graders. I begin my investigation and search of belongings. It was much like pulling the loose thread... I begin to find more and more. Three bags of weed later, I'm finding out we have a little drug ring at our school.

I'll admit it's one of the saddest things in the world to see a 6th grader be hand-cuffed by a school cop, cited, and then yelled at /threatened by their less-than-stable parents. I've even heard parents tell kids they wish they'd never given birth to them. And we wonder why they might turn to drugs? It nearly breaks my heart in two to have to then suspend them and arrange an expulsion hearing. Though, marijuana is still illegal and there are laws we must follow. I do try to present the picture of the "whole child" in the panel hearing so that the best decision will be made regarding these kids.




While in my teacher preparation program at BYU, a very wise professor once told me, "Kristie, even the good Lord couldn't save them all." I feel that only now, sixteen years later, I'm beginning to understand the meaning of that statement. A study done last summer by the CA Dept. of Education, states that 1 in 4 students will drop out of school before graduating. Similarly shocking data comes from the ACE Study done by Kaiser Permanente and the Center for Disease Control...perhaps the largest scientific research study of its kind that analyzes the relationship between multiple categories of childhood trauma (ACEs), and health and behavioral outcomes later in life. (Take the Study)

Maybe my professor was right. Perhaps we can't save them all, but we certainly can wear ourselves out trying. Identifying warning signs very early on and never, ever giving up on them. Even when it seems that everyone else has.

Feed the Birds?

Pigeons or seagulls...which are more disgusting? I can't decide. I find them both annoying, ugly, scavenger-like and not extremely useful. (I know, I know. As a good Mormon girl, and a Utah native, I should be remembering the time the early UT Saints crops were saved from the crickets by the seagulls...thus leaving their mark in history and obtaining the state bird status.) Still...they attack the students in my quad daily during lunch. Just today I saw quite the adacious fellow swoop down out of the sky and rip a sandwhich right out of the hand of a screaming 7th grade girl. I had to admit I laughed afterwards, it was pretty random! (I had to pretend I was outraged at the moment.)

Some California coastal cities have municipal codes prohibiting the feeding of seagulls or pigeons. So, my question for the day is this: What is their main purpose? Most folk don't eat them -- they are trash birds after all. Haven't we all had a run-in with one of these overly-friendly birds? I know I had a pack of gulls dive-bomb me in San Marcos Square in Venice. And, Mary Poppins and Bird Lady notwithstanding, feeding the birds isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Actually, it can wind up creating a bad situation, as I learned myself at the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral. For example, you'd never want to attract birds near to an airport as it can cause "bird strikes", such as the one that downed the US Airways flight into the Hudson River today. Yes, it's true. Just one of these little "feathered bullets" can down an Airbus 320 within minutes. I must admit, I didn't know this until today's news, but it just added to my reasons for disliking these creatures.

Here's a commentary from my friend Kristina and I on these "Flying Rats" as we sat on a park bench in Prague.