Politicians Strategically Apply Pillow to the Face of Public School Programs

I was reading our local rag and came across this article by Joan Ryan:

Slice:

Ronnie Scott kept quiet about the news.

"I don't want to put this out there and get a mob scene,'' she said.

Scott is assistant recreation director for San Francisco Recreation and Parks. She had just received word last week that funding for a summer sports program for kids at Visitacion Valley Elementary had come through from two local foundations. Scott knew that parents in this low-income neighborhood would lunge at the chance to secure one of the new camp's 50 available slots.

Especially this summer.

Vis Valley won't be open for summer school again this year. Only nine elementary schools in the city will be -- and two of those are open only to new immigrants and two are open only to students who attend those particular schools. In the remaining five schools, attendance will be limited to certain special ed students and to students who without summer school are likely to be left back.

Knowing the desperate situation, Scott quietly performed social triage, an increasingly familiar routine for public administrators: She offered spots first to the 25 students in her after-school "latch-key'' program. "These are kids who have nowhere to go after school, much less the whole summer,'' Scott said.

Everyone else at Vis Valley is pretty much out of luck.

The problem isn't with San Francisco Unified. Its hands are tied. This goes way beyond one neighborhood or one school district. Vis Valley is simply one more casualty of a state and national political environment that is, purposely or unwittingly, slowly smothering the public education system.

...At a time when education is supposed to be such a priority, when we test students exhaustively and punish schools for failing to reach achievement goals, how can we justify tossing students out the door for almost three months? How can we let all those precious weeks dribble away, wasted, without offering enrichment programs, and classes in the arts, and reading and math reviews for students who want -- and need -- a more solid foundation?

This isn't about San Francisco. It's about short-sighted and double- talking politicians on the state and national level who are willing to sacrifice a generation -- or two or three -- of students for the sake of what passes these days for being fiscally conservative. And it's about the rest of us letting them do it.

End slice:

Hands tied and schools smothered...that about sums it up for how the politicos value kids in the US today...at least the poor ones.