Our children are our future. This from the Ventura County Star.
The Rio School District plans to open an Office of Student and Family Services to help families looking for assistance or an advocate for their child. Rio officials said they hope it will help the district become more responsive to community needs.
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While the health and social services assistance will be available to anyone in the district, the Healthy Start program will particularly focus on Rio's Mixteco community.
Rio's migrant student population totals about 1,000 students, and Kelly estimated 20 to 25 percent likely are Mixteco, an indigenous group from the Mexico states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla. Migrant students often change schools during the year as their families follow work in industries such as agriculture.
Many in Ventura County's Mixteco population don't speak Spanish or English and are isolated by language and culture. Families are centered in Hueneme, Oxnard and El Rio, said Susan Haverland, executive director of the local Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project. It's a population that largely falls under the radar and needs more services, she said.
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And in a shocking but unrelated issue this same district is one of the worst performing in the region.
18 comments:
First and Murst!
NR
"The Rio School District plans to open an Office of Student and Family Services to help families looking for assistance or an advocate for their child."
Ummm isn't that what parents are for?!!? When the hell did it become someone else's responsibility to make sure your child is getting adequate guidance and support? Another handout that taxpayers have to shell out for...
They have these "extra" offices because the adminstration has moved into their brand spankin' new offices in the Riverpark development.
This program for illegal aliens in addition to schooling for nonresidents uses Federal, State, Local, and special grant money.
Man just like the housing bubble. If you can't afford the mortgage and now need a bailout to prevent foreclosure...guess what...you couldn't afford the house in the first place. You aren't entitled to live in a mcmansion.
If you need help paying for and raising your kid..guess what..you couldn't afford the kid!
I'm just waiting for some senator to proclaim that there should be a gmabler's bailout..they can't help it..they have a "disease".
Casey is a perfect example of what happens when you enable someone by bailing them out..do they stop? No, they just keep doing their self destructive behaviors.
Man, when did this country start being such a bunch of whiney babies that don't take responsibility for their own actions anymore? Pay the piper!!!!
Rob, I'm sure you will be relieved to discover that the D.C. schools district has a level of performance that would make Ventura County look like an exclusive prep school. And that's with relatively few poor immigrants--Arlington and PGC have large working class immigrant populations, but most foreigners in D.C. are middle- to upper-class politicians, businessmen etc. And the D.C. schools district performance comes with more spending on a per-student basis than most metropolitan areas.
All it really goes to show is that school performance isn't highly correlated with percentage of immigrants, or even with level of income (I would argue that level of income is the effect and education the cause.) What it's really related to is level of family commitment to education as a value, which itself is a product of culture. I know that's considered to be ugly cultural Darwinism, but everything in my experience points in that direction.
Put kids from a poor immigrant family from a culture that treasures education in the school system alongside kids from a rich American family who plan on floating through life living off the trust fund, and I can tell you who will get the A's and who will get the F's.
shame on you, PV, for not catering to Mr Dawg's prejudices!
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_6573433
Actually my prejudices probably lie more on the other side of PVs. Don't mistake my attempts at accurate diagnosis for any possible bias towards solutions.
School success is probably 1st family values regards education and 2nd percieved investment in the community. These poor Mixtecan kids are at the bottom of both bell curves and weighed down by a system that panders ratrher than nurtures.
As emporer of the universe I would declare these kids win an all expenses paid 4 week trip to America Camp. There they would get full physical workups, English immersion and socialization with the exception of nutritional mores. For that they would get shopping skills and marketing innoculations. Returned to their families with enough language to pick up the rest fairly quickly, enough social skills to avoid the worst scams and maltreatment and enough health and lifestyle orientation to prevent many emergencies; these kids would save us billions. But no. We assemble a circle of co-dependency twixt the victims and the social services and perpetuate the stereotypes.
Sound like what you expected? Not hardly.
Setting aside Rob's views on immigration, I think he has a legitimate concern regarding an expansion of the schooling system which may be unjustified. The problem with the D.C. schools system is that it became a bloated bureaucracy that was little more than job welfare, an easy way to buy votes by handing out huge numbers of jobs. Any time there's a big expansion of the schools program, or of any government bureaucracy, there's a significant risk that it's simply an attempt to secure employment for members of the union, juicy contracts for businesses owned by the friends of politicians, etc.
"Special needs" programs of any kind are especially susceptible to that, because it's easier to hide inefficiencies and corruption, as people don't look as closely at the higher numbers. Special needs students will need more resources--right? But how many resources do they really need, and who really knows what the dollar cost should be? And who's going to oppose expansion of a special needs program?
Setting aside Rob's views on immigration,...
Why set them aside? Legal, controlled immigration is probably our best bet for the future. Is immigration between States a case of immigration? Canada, Ireland? Okay somewhere short of Neo-nazi Canibal Slavetraders we draw a line.
I love immigration. I am very concerned that immigration is being undermined by illegal immigration. Kind of like how I would be concerned if the banks were losing my money due to bank robbery.
@Rob: "I love immigration. I am very concerned that immigration is being undermined by illegal immigration."
OK, I believe you, but you know and I know that a lot of the protests against schools accomodating non-English-speakers is thinly-veiled antagonism toward immigrants both legal and illegal.
As it turns out, I attended elementary school in Southern California; my primary education was a mix of regular public schools, public school satellite programs (riding the bus forty-five minutes each way, huzzah!), and private tutoring. I was in fact in a school where we were taught both English and Spanish, which looking back I think was potentially beneficial. Sadly, I am a failure of the system in question, as my Spanish remains at a minimal level, although Spanish pronunciations are much easier for me than for many Americans. I have no problem with teaching students both Spanish and English, although teaching students primarily in a non-English language would be a serious mistake.
Humm, $10M for about 1000 students? Comes to $10,000 a head for illegal aliens. Mexico decides not to help these people with a job and education so they come here. I wonder how many citizens I could help with jobs/education with $10Mil. I think some priorities are screwed up.
If we have to educate, provide health care, etc for illegal aliens from Mexico, why not fund it with import duties on things made in Mexico?
$10Mil is a guess.. $10Mil is the amount that Healthy Start gave to 23 diff schools. Rio got $450,000 from Healthy Start. Rest of the fund is fed and state grants.. from our tax dollars. Total amount is unknown yet. I suspect it will be on the low side of $10Mil/year operating cost because of special language needs and catch up classes.
protests against schools accomodating non-English-speakers is thinly-veiled antagonism toward immigrants both legal and illegal.
Yeah. This is a sore point. IMO English speaking is irellevant. Accomodation is fine. We had minor skirmishes in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries. We've also had minor skirminishes over Catholic, Protestant, Judaish, etc. BFD.
Off-topic, but "holy market volatility, Batman!" Dow Jones up 2%, falling like a rock back down to the flatline in a half an hour, than roaring back up 1.5% in the last half hour . . . and all on thin volume. The market's moving, but on low volume there aren't a lot of retail investors in, so who's pulling the levers?
But-but-but...
I thought you said the mid-term test was on Winged-Feathered-Snake Day!
What's this "Tuesday" nonsense?
I don't recognize "Tuesday"!
Your nation's school systems are biased against my native Mexican culture.
Yeah from what I heard, France is opening up a healthy start program for Americans..where we can speak english all day, have access to american television in english, and even go to some restaurants that cater english speaking only. Mexico is doing its part as well, welcoming immigrants from all corners of the world and giving them access to schools in their native language..last I heard, they are opening up a school from the timbuktuans where they speak timbuktuanese.
As emporer of the universe I would declare these kids win an all expenses paid 4 week trip to America Camp. There they would get full physical workups, English immersion and socialization with the exception of nutritional mores. For that they would get shopping skills and marketing innoculations.
Hey Ron Dawg, finally made it over to your home turf.
Good point. If I were emporer... The first thing I'd do is up the English education. (Kids, adults, everyone.) How the heck can we expect to function in a city with large districts that speak Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Cantonese, and I'm sure somewhere there is a Mandarin district that I missed.
FYI, my grandmother grew up in an American town that spoke exclusively German and had "difficulties" later in life not being exposed to English early.
Sadly, our culture is becoming far to dependent...
Got popcorn?
Neil
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