Saturday, February 17, 2007

The CCISD Principals and the Attendance Officers lay and wait for the magic number to file against the student and the parent to initiate prosecution

GRusling - 01:11pm Feb 11, 2007 Central (#1 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

    As long as we're questioning public schooling, we should question whether there really is an abstraction called "the public" at all, except in the ominous calculations of social engineers. As a boy from the banks of the Monongahela River in western Pennsylvania, I find the term insulting, a cartoon of social reality. If an institution that robs people of their right to self-determination can call itself "public", if being "public" means it can turn families into agents of the state, making parents spy on and harass their sons and daughters because a schoolteacher tells them to; if the state can steal your home because you can't pay its "public" school taxes, and state courts can break up your family if you refuse to allow the state to tell your children what to think - then the word public is a label for garbage and for people who allow themselves to be treated like slaves.
John Taylor Gatto

GRusling - 01:29pm Feb 11, 2007 Central (#2 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

Once called "Head Start" in Texas, what good is kindergarten (and now pre-k) for a child from a healthy family who speaks fluent English? It doesn't teach them to socialize, it teaches them the bad habits of other small children they're forced into close, daily contact with. It teaches them to listen to their "Teacher" and transport his or her commands to their parents. It teaches them that the "Teacher" is the person best qualified to answer all their questions while their parents are usually wrong, even about what is and isn't important in their lives, like family, heritage and individual accomplishment. What good is memorizing "facts" which are already written in reference books, available to anyone with a desire to discover them? If the "fact" is of some practical use a person might want to remember it, but in the abstract world of study for the sake of uniformity and conformity, memorizing it is nothing but training in doing what you're told and has nothing at all to do with education.


GRusling - 02:04pm Feb 11, 2007 Central (#3 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

The myth that "schooling" has some relationship to education is only that, a myth! To be educated requires the ability to think independently, not simply to recite what someone else has already discovered, a "pre-thought thought." No allowance is made in our Public Schools for independent thought, much less action. There simply isn't time and it disrupts the schedule.

What is the purpose of true education? As an exercise for the young it would teach them to inquire into the unknown. That would require them to follow "the road less traveled" since goldmines are never discovered in the middle of a well-worn track! Simple "knowledge" is much better learned from the necessity to do a certain thing, then just learning how.

What is the purpose of sorting children by age in our public schools? It can't be "education" because how much can one 5 year old learn from another 5 year old? Children, like adults, learn a lot more from their peers than from any instructor. Do you really want your son or daughter to learn anything from that mean little brat down the street? When you send them to school with him or her, locking them in a closed environment with them day after day, rest assured that is what will happen!

Have you ever watched an inquisitive child? If you have you'll find them following their older siblings, never those of the same age or younger, always underfoot of their parents, trying to understand what those they admire and look up to are doing. They're "learning," all by themselves at their own pace, in their own time, when their curiosity prompts them to learn about and try to understand some particular activity. Their minds are being stimulated to discover and that almost never happens in "school" because they're not allowed to stray from the "prescribed course" long enough to follow their instincts and learn about whatever has caught their attention at the moment.


Jaime Kenedeno - 04:56pm Feb 14, 2007 Central (#4 of 13)  Mark Delete MessageReply

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Parent requires the child to attend school if the child is present at beginning of the day!

TEXAS EDUCATION CODE Sec. 25.094. FAILURE TO ATTEND SCHOOL

The fallacy of this law is that it does not differentiate between a student that is absent and a student that is skipping or tardy.

An absent student is one who does not arrive at school in the morning and is absent for the WHOLE Day. The student was never on campus. The Parent is responsible for the student getting to school (requiring the student to attend school). If the student does not get to school it is the Parent’s responsibility not necessarily the Parent’s fault. There are circumstances where the student will walk in the front door and out the back door without attending a single class. This is where the attendance officers need to improve their due diligence like the old days.

Once the student is counted present in the morning; the Parent has required the student (child) to attend school. Once the student is verified in attendance at the beginning of the school day the student is in the custody of the School.

If the student is tardy or skips class (on campus or off campus) this happens on the watch of the school. The Parent if informed should cooperate and communicate with the School Counselors Administrators and the Attendance Officer to correct the behavior. The Security and Attendance officer should take notice and tighten the belt. This is a security issue as well; there is no excuse for students coming and going outside of the lunch period and it is imperative that attendance irregularities be dealt with within 24 hours. This is easily done with our modern technology.

Instead, what we are seeing is the Attendance Officers documenting the absences as they accumulate and filing on the Parent and student when the number of absences are achieved.

Another fallacy resides in the Parental notification outreach process. There are parts of the law that dic


Jaime Kenedeno - 04:58pm Feb 14, 2007 Central (#5 of 13)  Mark Delete MessageReply

dictate certain steps be taken,

A warning is issued as required by Section 25.095(a)

25.095(a) refers to the Issuance of student handbook at the beginning of the school year that informs the reader of the Non Attendance law and the student's parent is subject to prosecution under Section 25.093 and the student is subject to prosecution under Section 25.094 if the student is absent from school on 10 or more days or parts of days within a six-month period in the same school year or on three or more days or parts of days within a four-week period.

(b) A school district shall notify a student's parent if the student has been absent from school, without excuse under Section 25.087, on three days or parts of days within a four-week period. The notice must:

(1) inform the parent that:

(A) it is the parent's duty to monitor the student's school attendance and require the student to attend school; and

(B) the parent is subject to prosecution under Section 25.093; and

(2) request a conference between school officials and the parent to discuss the absences.

But if these steps required (by the very same law) for the School under 25.095 (a) or (b) are disregarded by the School this is not a defense to the prosecution.

(c) The fact that a parent did not receive a notice under Subsection (a) or (b) does not create a defense to prosecution under Section 25.093 or 25.094.

So the Parent is prosecuted regardless of whether the rules applying to the school responsibilities are followed or not.

The School has no responsibility.

http://ccisd-kenedeno-edu.blogspot.com/2007/02/parent-requires-child-to-attend-school.html


dannoynted1 - 10:07pm Feb 14, 2007 Central (#6 of 13)  Mark Reply

We talked to a "truancy officer" today and he said he would be happy to document and testify to the criminal hook this law has/is detrimental to the students at CCISD..."in five years when i retire."

The selective prosecution is done selective and on the directives of the principal of the school.

since there is no "superintendent"there is no boss, so these principals operate as a fiefdom unto themselves.

well i guess the "consultants at the "waste of money" "waters group' teaches the "pro business" how to become a specialist in "working" the education code of texas to be subjective in their "waste of water group"


GRusling - 09:38am Feb 16, 2007 Central (#7 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

I appreciate that there are many ways and theories for "working the system" but the fact is, the system itself is a failure if it's true intent is to educate children. The very real question is, is that what it was designed to do?

Our form of compulsory schooling was first initiated here (in America) in the State of Massachusetts from the 1830's till the 1880's. It was resisted, sometimes with guns, by an estimated 80 percent of the Massachusetts population. A senator's office contended not too long ago that prior to compulsory government schooling the literacy rate in Massachusetts was 98 percent, but after it the figure never again reached above 91 percent.

The "system" was imported, wholesale, from Prussia! That was accomplished in the 19th century so the question is, what are our schools really designed to accomplish? What was this "Prussian" system designed to do?

James Bryant Conant - president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI poison gas specialist, WWII executive on the atomic bomb project, high commissioner of the American zone in Germany after WWII, and truly one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, directs the curious and the uninformed to Alexander Inglis's 1918 book, "Principles of Secondary Education."


GRusling - 09:40am Feb 16, 2007 Central (#8 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

Inglis, for whom a lecture in education at Harvard is named, makes it perfectly clear that compulsory schooling on this continent was intended to be just what it had been for Prussia in the 1820s: a fifth column into the growing democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical incision into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject, by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other more subtle means, and it was unlikely that the ignorant mass of mankind, separated in childhood, would ever re-integrate into a dangerous whole.

Inglis breaks down the purpose - the actual purpose - of modem schooling into six basic functions, any one of which is enough to curl the hair of those innocent enough to believe the three traditional goals of reading, writing and arithmetic:


GRusling - 09:41am Feb 16, 2007 Central (#9 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

1. The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2. The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force.

3. The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one.

4. The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best.

5. The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain.


GRusling - 09:43am Feb 16, 2007 Central (#10 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

6. The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

The preceeding are the words of Alexander Inglis, not myself. I lifted them wholesale from his work.

That, unfortunately, is the purpose of mandatory public education in this country. And lest you take Inglis for an isolated crank with a rather too cynical take on the educational enterprise, you should know that he was hardly alone in championing these ideas. Conant himself, building on the ideas of Horace Mann and others, campaigned tirelessly for an American school system designed along the same lines. Men like George Peabody, who funded the cause of mandatory schooling throughout the South, certainly understood that the Prussian system was useful in creating, not only a harmless electorate and a servile labor force, but also a virtual herd of mindless consumers. In time a great number of industrial titans came to recognize the enormous profits to be had by cultivating and tending just such a herd via public education, among them Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific, difficult tasks."


GRusling - 09:45am Feb 16, 2007 Central (#11 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

And so, we find ourselves today, caught in a net of irrelevance because our early "training" demands it. Our public schools, of which almost all of us are a product are exactly that, "training" and not education at all. Just as the Captains of Industry in the 19th and early 20th century expected, we sort ourselves according to the categories they put in place and by the time anyone realizes what has occurred they're just like me, old, irrelevant and impotent to correct the problem.

I give you a quote from John Taylor Gatto, New York State and New York City "Teacher of the Year" (on more than one occasion), author of "The Underground History of American Education" which gave me my first insight into the "real" problem in our public schools:

    "I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were."
    "Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those


GRusling - 09:46am Feb 16, 2007 Central (#12 of 13)  Mark Reply
"The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves." --John Locke

    even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?"
Are we unable to free ourselves from the cycle of "non-education" that surrounds us???

Jaime Kenedeno - 03:53am Feb 17, 2007 Central (#13 of 13)  Mark Edit MessageDelete MessageReply

I agree that the teachers are placed in hard to win but precarious position. In the case with the compulsory attendance laws and ongoing legislation, the teachers only document the daily attendance of the students for each class block or period. It is a simple roster sheet that the teacher bubbles in if the student is absent or tardy. The roster is collected 5 or 10 minutes after the bell rings and the period begins. They are fed into a scan tron type of machine and immediately record and spit out the data. It is a simple task for the computer to perform analysis for irregularities such as students who were in attendance for the first two or three classes and now they are absent in 4th and 5th but back for 6th etc etc......

The issue is not addressed but it is documented and tallied up for the prosecution for non attendance. Where is the attendance officer and the attendance staff, the administrators and most of all the security?

Yet, the parent is blamed for not requiring the child to attend. The child is testing the boundaries and there is no redirection so the behavior continues as the Principals and the Attendance Officers lay and wait for the magic number to file against the student and the parent to initiate prosecution for not complying with the compulsory attendance law. It is generation of extra revenue for the district and it draws praise approval and rewards to the money makers who tally the absences and do nothing the intercede. It is like a speed trap but worse.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

To be in journalism is to be in the business of credibility."

Charles E. Scripps dies at 87

February 2, 2007

Charles E. Scripps, scion of a legendary media family and the board chairman of The E. W. Scripps Company for more than four decades, died today of natural causes at the age 87 near his home in Naples, Fla.

Charles Scripps' long tenure as head of the company founded in 1878 by his grandfather, Edward W. Scripps, was marked by dramatic expansion into new businesses and impressive financial growth.


As board chairman from 1953 until 1994, he presided over the company's growth as a newspaper publisher and the company's entry into other forms of media, including broadcast television, cable TV systems, cable TV networks and the Internet. In 1986, the company brought cousin John P. Scripps' seven West Coast newspapers into the family fold with a merger agreement, and two years later initiated a public stock offering that provided family members with a way to diversify their holdings. Simultaneously, Scripps served as trustee of The Edward W. Scripps Trust - controlling shareholder of the company - and was chairman of the Trust from 1948 until 2004.

"To carry the family name is to carry the responsibility for quality and innovation in an ever-changing media environment," Scripps said in a 2003 interview. "The E.W. Scripps Company has survived 125 years because it embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of its founding father."

It was that spirit, which fostered development of Scripps Networks - the division that operates HGTV, Food Network, DIY Network, Fine Living and GAC (Great American Country), of which Scripps was especially proud.

"This company, our community and the entire media industry are affected by the loss of Charles Scripps," said Kenneth W. Lowe, president and chief executive officer of

The E. W. Scripps Company. "Charles set the tone for this company's fearless journalism, unquestioned integrity and restless innovation. Those are legacies that continue to influence our approach to operating the business that carries his family's name."

When once asked about a guiding principle, Scripps said, "It's simple, really. Just look at the direction you're going and ask: 'Can we be proud of that?'"

"Charles Scripps provided the glue that bonded the Scripps enterprise together for a half-century," said William R. Burleigh, chairman of The E. W. Scripps Company. "He stepped forward as the family's representative when he was only 28 and served continuously until 2003, presiding over a period of unprecedented growth and success. This sense of responsibility and wise counsel animated everything he did - the company, in his family and in the community."

Often described as "a newspaperman's newspaperman," Scripps regularly asked editors, "What are you doing for your communities?"

When the newspaper division was introducing its Total Quality program to news and business leaders in the late 1980s, Scripps was asked for a slogan. He responded with just three words: "Quality reflects character."

He later explained, "I remember getting a note from a disgruntled reader about an error in one of our newspapers. I checked it out and I was told it was 'just a minor error.' I remember saying that there's no such thing as a minor error. An error is an advertisement of poor workmanship and we simply can't tolerate that in our newspapers. To be in journalism is to be in the business of credibility."

Scripps was born Jan. 27, 1920, in San Diego, to Robert Paine and Margaret Culbertson Scripps. He and his three brothers and two sisters grew up at nearby Miramar, their grandfather Edward Willis Scripps' 2,000-acre ranch.

Scripps attended William & Mary College in Williamsburg, Va., but returned to California and entered Pomona College after his father - the sole trustee of The Edward W. Scripps Trust - died at age 42 in 1938. Shortly thereafter, Scripps began his newspaper career at his grandfather's first newspaper, The Cleveland Press, where he covered police and courts.

"He willingly rose to the responsibility inherent to his birthright," said Lawrence A. Leser, retired chairman and CEO of Scripps. "He learned the business from the bottom up, tutored by the men who had worked with his father."

Just as Scripps inherited his grandfather's passion for publishing, the two also shared a love of sailing. It came as no surprise when young Scripps enlisted with the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. He was stationed in the Pacific and rose to the rank of lieutenant before returning to the family business after the war.

Scripps was 28 when he became chairman of the family trust and moved to Cincinnati, where the trust was headquartered. Even after he became chairman of The E. W. Scripps Company five years later, he continued to live in Cincinnati rather than move to company headquarters in New York City. In 1977, he welcomed corporate executives to Cincinnati, where the company has since been headquartered.

Recognizing that with leadership comes responsibility, Scripps used his influence to promote freedom of the press throughout the world. He served as president of the Inter-American Press Association in 1980 and president of its advisory council from 1981-82. During that time, he also traveled to Mexico, Austria and the Soviet Union in support of UNESCO's International Programme for the Development of Communication and to France for the World Press Freedom Committee.

Through the years he served on the boards of many organizations, both those related to the media industry as well as civic and public service organizations in Cincinnati and, in later years, in Naples, Fla., where he spent the winter months.

However, the nonprofit organization that received his greatest attention was The Salvation Army, which he served locally, nationally and internationally.

"Mr. Scripps was a gentle giant," said Maj. Kenneth Maynor, divisional commander of The Salvation Army. "He was warm, humble and gracious - totally without pretense - and yet he was world-renowned as an innovative, truly great leader. During his 30-plus years of service he was a revered partner in the ministry, whose wisdom was a blessing we did not take for granted."

Scripps received The William Booth Award in 1988 and the prestigious "Others Award" from The Greater Cincinnati Salvation Army. In addition, he has been honored by the National Jewish Hospital and Research Center in Denver and the American Advertising Foundation. In 1983, he received an honorary doctorate from Ohio University for his contributions to communications and his "championship of press freedom worldwide." In 1986, the Scripps Howard Foundation established the Charles E. Scripps Literacy Award in his honor.

The Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce presented its Great Living Cincinnatian Award to Scripps in February 2003. In accepting the honor, he said, "It's not about power. It's about influence and how you use that for the betterment of your community and the world."

After 57 years on the company's board of directors, Scripps retired in May 2003. Four months later, Scripps was presented with a framed copy of the resolution board members passed in honor of his service. It recognizes the family-friendly workplace he created, his vision for the company, faith in its leadership and "resolve to produce quality journalism that enlightened the populace, improved communities and defended the First Amendment."

He leaves his wife, Mary Elizabeth (Libby) Breslin Scripps, whom he married in 1993; four children: Charles E. Scripps, Jr., of Darby, Mont.; Marilyn Scripps Wade and Julia Scripps Heidt, both of Cincinnati; and Eaton Scripps, of Boulder, Colo.; two stepsons, Ben P. Breslin and Andrew W. Breslin; seven grandchildren and three step-grandchildren; two brothers: Robert P. Scripps, of Fredericksburg, Texas; and Sam Scripps of Rhinebeck, N.Y. He was preceded in death by his wife of 41 years, Lois Anne MacKay Scripps.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)