We attended the Parent Academy last Wednesday evening to learn a little more about how the Haverhill Public Schools keep our children safe during their days.  It was illuminating and I wish – as usual – that more parents cared enough to attend.  The seminar is free and babysitting as well as pizza for the kids is provided and parents get snacks and lots of information to take home.  Each presentation ends with drawings for YMCA youth and teen memberships.  There’s one Parent Academy left this school year about getting kids ready for summer and for next year.  Unless your child is a HHS Senior you really should attend April 28th at the Hunking School 5:45pm.

We learned about how bullying is handled within the system from Officer William Alvarado.  I’m not going to recreate the program but the three key statements I took away from his presentation were:

• Bullying isn’t something that only happens here in Haverhill.  I knew this but I hear a lot of people talk about the bullying issue as a reason they don’t want their kids in public school – bullies are everywhere.
• Parents need to follow through with prosecution when bullying gets out of control.  Too often all of the work done to build a case and get the bullying on record is wasted because parents won’t follow through.  The bullying then continues and this lack of follow through makes stopping it much harder the second time around.
• Children who bully often come from parents who bully.  I’ve said this before in another post on bullying but I want to reiterate it here.  We as a culture need to stand up to all bullies!

Donald Davoli spoke about our District Crisis Response Team and how they work with the individual school crisis response teams to plan for and manage crises.  While the team initially formed in response to the Columbine shooting – their definition of crisis handles any event which impacts the ability of the students to concentrate on learning.  Our crisis teams work on everything from the H1N1 problems of this school year to grief counseling, unauthorized people in the building, natural disaster and much more.  They also mentioned our District Crisis Team needs sponsors so if you or someone you know can initiate contact with a company in the crisis or medical field to sponsor some much needed supplies for the schools please let them know!

The rest of the presentation was broken down by grade level.  The Elementary, Middle and High School each had a presenter who spoke about how to be involved as a parent in your child’s school and in their life.  The main goals of this portion of the presentation seemed to be expressing what is appropriate and expected in each age range, how the schools handle problems at each age range, and how to stop problems at the root for each age range.

I thank the presenters for their hard work and I thank the DPC for continuing to sponsor these events despite the poor parent turnout.  I also thank the Haverhill YMCA for donating memberships to the DPC to provide door prizes for these events.

Cyber-Bullying seems to be the new hype item to scare parents.  Just this weekend the Eagle Tribune published this article about some new legislature to combat the ever-growing cyber bullying happening in school.  The Hunking School is hosting an information session on how parents can recognize and prevent cyber bullying on March 22nd with Katelyn LeClerc.  The Parent Academy at the end of the month will cover cyber bullying in its “Safety and Security” presentation and School Committee Memeber Joe Bevilacqua asked for an agenda item at a meeting in February to discuss this growing problem.  And googling cyber-bullying brings up an almost endless list of links to places dedicated to stopping the epidemic.

Certainly text messaging and facebook are being used by kids to bully each other.  The problem isn’t with the text messaging or the facebook posts but with the bullying and the kids.  Take away the medium and you won’t alter the message!  When I went through middle school and high school there were no cellphones or internet but there was plenty of bullying.  Kids wrote notes and stuffed them in lockers, they wrote on each other’s lockers with markers, yelled at each other across the hallways, whispered in their friend’s ears and giggled or snickered at their victims or prank called people’s houses.  There was violence and depression and detention and not a lot of actual education about why this was bad – certainly it was treated by many as a right of passage to be bullied in school.  Unfortunately not much has changed in many respects except that the kids have flashier toys to perpetuate the bullying.

From the Eagle Tribune article: “Parents will have to realize that they’re responsible for their children’s actions, and if they’re learning this at home and the children bring it to school, there will be repercussions for that,” Murray said. this is as close as they come to the root of the problem.  Unfortunately, the parents who are the worst offenders – the ones who are just adult bullies – won’t suddenly have an epiphany and become responsible parents because they got a note from the school.  These parents will see this as just more persecution and either blame their child for bringing home unwanted attention or blame the victim for coming forward with a complaint.

Sadly, bullying isn’t looked at as a serious problem by most people.  This is evident in our media bias.  Think of the sit-coms and cartoons popular on TV and how many of them have a bully/victim dynamic as one of their main comedic elements.  Here is an article on bullying regarding the Drew Carey Show and this Tvtropes wikki on sitcom archetypes cites many other good examples.  Because the shows always place some kind of redeeming moment for the bully we’ve been desensitized into thinking all bullies aren’t all bad.

Look also at the double standard society uses to judge success for our children.  We expect our children to do well in school and go to college so they can have a successful career but we still call the top performing academic achievers “geeks” or “nerds” who are often “bookworms” and “teacher’s pets.”  We need to stop stigmatizing our children’s successes!

Then there is this pervasiveness in society whereby we can’t be content with our own lives without somehow disparaging someone else.  This need society possesses to keep up with the neighbors and to have everything bigger, better, newer has plunged the country into the worst recession in decades.  We’ve tied so much of our self worth up in what we have or wear or drive and we’ve passed that down to our children.  If their little classmates don’t have the right toys or designer clothes then they are somehow not worth being friends with and subsequently end up teased by their peers.  Already the need for conformity has hit my home – my Kindergartner and third grader are always asking for things because “everyone else in my class has them.”  I struggle to find a line between teaching them the values important to me and making them complete social pariahs at school.

Do I have the answers to this problem?  Not with the current societal conditions.  But I believe that everyone needs to take more personal responsibility for their decisions and actions and realize how much their children are watching and learning from them.  We also need to intervene on the behalf of children and other adults who are being bullied.  We need to stop putting our heads in the sand and pretending no one else’s problems effect us.  One major factor that allows bullies to continue their reign of terror is that not enough of their peers stand up to them and say enough is enough.  Bullying will only be reduced at the peer level or with parental involvement.  Laws won’t make bullies stop.  Giving the victims the support they need to stand up for themselves by standing up with them is the best start we can give this issue.

I’ve said time and again that when Zero Tolerance is used Zero Thought is applied.  NCLB is the Education version of Zero Tolerance.  Neither of these policies make sense on their own merits and when combined as they are within our schools the results are disastrous.

For example: I understand and support the HHS policy banning cell phone usage in school.  There is far too much distraction and opportunity for cheating to allow phones to be used.  I also hope that should an incident arise where a child walks out of the school bathroom sobbing hysterically with a cellphone in hand because she’s just received news that someone in her family is in some kind of peril – that day the phone usage by that student would be forgotten in the wave of support she would receive in dealing with her crisis.

What I can’t understand or support is any policy which negates the ability of those in charge of enforcement to make a judgment call regarding the situation before them nor can I abide by those who hide behind the policy when making poor decisions.  Was it truly necessary to have a 12 year old girl taken from school in handcuffs because she wrote on a desk?  What happened to the days of detention and having the offender wash all the desks?

Of course those who make the policy on a national level do so as a knee jerk reaction to widely publicized incidents instead of actual data! “The truth is that there is no comprehensive, mandatory federal school crime reporting and tracking of actual school crime incidents for K-12 schools. Federal school crime and violence data consists primarily of a hodgepodge collection of over a half-dozen academic surveys and research studies. This data is often mistakenly perceived by policymakers, the media, and others as a reflection of the number of actual crime and violence incidents, and as credible trend indicators of school crime and violence occurring in our schools.” So why should we expect our local policy makers to act differently?  This is mirrored by the recent actions of the local School Committee in making immediate changes in their transportation policy in response to one incident which made the local TV news despite the repeated success of their previous policy on a daily basis.

Then I read this article about the relationship between the Zero Tolerance legislation and the NCLB legislation and the combined effects on our students.  You’re going to want some time before you open that link as the pdf is 56 pages.  The pdf report made, much more eloquently than I ever would, many of the points I’ve tried to discuss since I’ve been learning about our education system.  Here is one such point: “Rather than viewing schools as places where young people should be nurtured, supported and developed to their full potential, zero tolerance treats students as adversaries or threats to be suppressed or even discarded in the quest for good schools.  High-stakes testing regards our youth as products to be tested, measured and made more uniform.  Each of these policies has too often been inappropriately substituted for meaningful education reform.”

As a society, we have allowed our fear to overwhelm us.  Our schools are slowly turning into miniature prison like environments complete with security cameras and metal detectors and we are expecting our children to respond positively to this!  Then we add more rigorous and more frequent standardized testing with ever higher penalties for failure for both the student and the school and we expect our children to respond positively to this as well!

Again from the pdf report: “The impact of high-stakes testing on the classroom has been well-documented.  Test-driven reforms have had a significant narrowing effect on school curricula, leading to untested subjects like science, social studies, art and physical education being excluded or de-emphasized.  Because so much is riding on the outcome of standardized tests, meaningful instruction that supports the development of higher order skills like critical thinking is suffocated and often replaced by “drill and kill” techniques, rote memorization exercises and teaching to the test.” We’ve seen this locally with the budget discussions where the “encore” programs (Gym, Art and Music) are reduced and Social Studies textbooks are pushed to the bottom of the priority list every year because “Social Studies is not yet on the test.”

When you thrust groups of students into an environment which gets more confining and allows less interaction and expression and then bore them with curriculum which has taken the discovery enthusiasm out of learning you are setting students up for failure.  Look at private sector employment – think of the “water cooler” moments where adults are allowed to get up and stretch and socialize.  Consider how much of one’s day involves taking a minute for a personal email or checking out a favorite blog or shopping site or facebook.  Now look at a student’s day and think about how cooped up and stir crazy our children must feel with less opportunity for those “water cooler” moments like recess or art or gym in addition to the immense pressure of grades and testing.  Imagine if at the end of every week your boss administered a two hour exam to determine if you were going to get the paycheck you worked all week for!

And how has all of this impacted graduation rates?  Have we achieved increased proficiency?  Are we really doing right by our students?  No.  Graduation rates are falling and more people are choosing to obtain a GED instead of a High School Diploma.  Again from the pdf report with additional links:  “recently-released data show that the nation’s graduation rate in 2006 – 69% - was the lowest it has been since before NCLB was passed.  Of particular concern is that the rates for Black and Latino students – 51% and 55%, respectively – dropped significantly from 2005 to 2006.  Additionally, in 2008, the number of persons taking the GED test was at its highest level since before NCLB.” Can we please stop legislating our children’s education into the abyss and enact some education reform that is perhaps actual reform and includes actual education?

The February 11^th meeting of the School Committee was a turning point for the newly elected members.  The gloves came off this night leaving no doubt in my mind that we’re in for two years of the same bickering only with new faces.

The first item of contention was Mr. Magliocchetti’s placement of agenda items requiring a report from the Superintendent.  Apparently he is in violation of School Committee Policy since items requiring a report from the Superintendent need to be the will of the Committee as a whole and not just one member.  This policy is for a good reason, as the Mayor did mention that if all seven of them posted an item requiring a half hour report the meetings would be out of control with regard to the length of the meetings.

Personally, I wish Mr. Magliocchetti would take it upon himself to attend some of the meetings that Dr Buchanan has with the Administrators to get this information and then pass it along to his fellow committee members in the spirit of communication instead of forcing the administrators to come to the meetings to essentially cover the same information twice.  Then when Mr. Magliocchetti requests a list of wants and needs for the future and alternatives to the current system I would also appreciate it if he would not dismiss those wants, needs and alternatives with comments about how we need to address the current situation.

The second item of contention was the transportation policy.  This item will be discussed at length in my next post.  The true colors of our current committee showed brightly here!

Lastly, we spent almost half an hour on meeting minute approval and the appropriateness of executive session.  What a fiasco that was.  In making a motion to make certain executive session minutes public Mr. Sierpina gave confidential information at the public meeting.  Even if the School Committee had voted to keep those minutes confidential there is no way to un-ring that bell.  Now that the issue is public knowledge the Eagle Tribune has reported on it here.

Mr. Magliocchetti also stressed during the discussion about executive session minutes that the “rat” on the School Committee who leaks executive session materials to the newspaper needed to be uncovered and censured.  No one commented on this at all!  Is Mr. Magliocchetti channeling 1950′s gangster movies?  Certainly his vocabulary contains more eloquent ways to make his point about the leaking of information.

I’m also disappointed in the newspaper coverage of the meeting by the Eagle Tribune.  With the variety of subjects discussed only the possibility of Andover renting space in the Bartlett School Building made it to press.  No mention was made of the public comment from Fred Simmons regarding the unions banding together against privatization of the night custodians at HHS and the turnout of union employees.  The room was full!  Not even a picture of the kids from Hunking Middle School giving their presentation from the special two day leadership skills conference sponsored by Delta Dental made it to our paper!

On a positive note, I would like to commend the committee’s eagerness on supporting a fee for the return of confiscated cell phones.  I know Mr. Nangle balked at the $20 fee as being a tough amount in a grim economy but that’s one fee I bet few parents would pay twice.  Besides, the fee is not much compared to the cost of cell phones and cell phone plans.  Texting is not a cheap add-on!  There’s also a very simple way to avoid ever encountering this fee – put your phone away when in school.

All at the same time?  That’s what happened to me Thursday evening when someone from the City came and plowed the section of sidewalk we must traverse three times a day to get the children on and off the bus.

You would think I would be thrilled.  The way is clear and we don’t have to walk small children down the street.  But this is one section of sidewalk after one storm impacting one bus stop.  The real issue is fixing the system so it doesn’t come to this!  The only reason why our section was cleared is this article.   My hope is the article spurs the discussion necessary around our city to force City Hall to either enforce the current statute or make changes.

I wish as people we could be proactive and responsible and clear our snow.  This isn’t just important for the kids who need to go to the bus.  The postal and other delivery people who travel our city every day need safe passage as well as the everyday ordinary citizens of Haverhill.  What about emergency personnel if the unexpected happens and they must get to our doors?

The counter argument to enforcement is “But what about Grandma and Grandpa who can’t clear the snow and can’t afford to hire someone to clear the snow and have no family to help them clear the snow?”   This is the issue that keeps the city from doing anything at all about the snow.  We have a Council on Aging and we have Elder Services.  We provide assistance for a number of day to day needs for our elderly and disabled – why can’t we provide snow assistance?  Then the city would be able to force those who are able but aren’t willing to clear their snow.  Not just for me because I’m vocal; but for everyone who walks our sidewalks for whatever reason at whatever time of day.

Every storm results in this same issue.  Homeowners are not removing the snow from their sidewalks.  I’ve called the DPW and the Mayor’s office and anyone else who will listen to determine who is ultimately responsible for the sidewalks after a storm.  The answer: the homeowner.  My next question was who enforces this so I may contact them directly.  The answer: no one.

The problem with enforcement, I was told, is that the police department does not have the staff to patrol every street and catch every homeowner who is not clearing snow so they have decided to not enforce the law at all.  Their logic is flawed.  They also can’t possibly have the staff to patrol every street and catch every criminal and yet they don’t throw every law out as unenforceable.  I’d like to think we have the staff to deal with direct complaints and if the fines start to accumulate maybe we can add some overtime.

I believe the town is missing out on a huge revenue stream every winter.  Instead of sending a DPW person with a sidewalk plow to clear the sidewalks after receiving complaints; the city needs to enforce the snow removal laws we already have.  Certainly launch a public information campaign in the paper and on the City of Haverhill website.  Be kind at first and issue warnings for the first day or so.  Then fine people for not removing the snow.  If the city needs to plow an area due to complaints then pass that cost onto the person who neglected their property.  The city fines people for keeping excessive trash on their property through the board of health so this isn’t an unheard of proposition.  Somehow despite the lack of personnel they manage to enforce the parking bans during the snow.

One glaring example of a homeowner who just does not care is the owner of the green house on the corner of Groveland and Lackey Streets.  Not only did they not clear their sidewalk but when they did clear their driveway they piled the snow to make a three foot mound blocking access to their sidewalk further.  The portion of the sidewalk at the corner that is cleared was done by another parent in the neighborhood to make space for the children to stand while waiting for the bus.  To get to the bus stop we must either take a circuitous route down side streets that don’t have a sidewalk at all or walk in Groveland Street where the busier traffic is.