Dozens of parents in one Lincoln community are being forced to camp out for three nights in hopes of getting their kids into a kindergarten class.
Lincoln Crossing Elementary is so impacted there only a limited amount of open spots available. Registration begins at 7 a.m. on Tuesday.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
All Children Should Get To Go To Their Neighborhood School
It's the school district's responsibility to have rooms and teachers for students, not parents' responsibility to find a school with room for their children:
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8 comments:
Whaaaaat? Wouldn't increased enrollment be seen as a good thing? Have they ever heard of portable classrooms? I sure hope they aren't planning on charging bus fees to those whom they don't admit.
My reading of this is that the school district has the room & teachers for these students, it just may not be in the school most convenient to the parents.
Don't think it is written anywhere that your child has a right to go to the school next door. Or even a right to have a school next door. You only have a right to have a school that your child can reasonably attend. These kids have that.
It's not a matter of "rights", it's a matter of what neighborhood schools *should* be about. Kids should be able to go to the school nearest their house, not the school most convenient for the school district (or the school that will satisfy someone's idea regarding racial quotas, for that matter).
Darren, I have to totally disagree with you here. Think about the implication of your wording. "Kids should be able to go to the school nearest their house, not the school most convenient for the school district...." Populations sometimes shift in communities. A new community is built, another is abandoned. The school building in the abandoned area still exists and can service students. Do you propose to pick this building up and move it to the new community? Does the school district abandon the old school and build a new one where the new community is?
I submit it is more cost effective for the school system to bus some students to an underutilized school instead of building a new building. At least in the short run until the population stabilizes and the needs are fully understood. The school district in this case had planned on building a new school to accommodate a new community. They don't have the money to build right now and they have the capacity to appropriately handle the children elsewhere in the system. You seem to be suggesting that the school system should constantly build new schools and abandon old ones regardless of fiscal sense.
The only thing I think the school system should have done different is to do as in most communitities, as demographics change, you redraw the school boundaries. Therefore there is none of this camping out and first come, first served which does seem a bit unfair. If you told me you disagreed with the process because some working parents couldn't take time off work to sit in a line, I would totally agree with you.
Steve, you make good points. Of course I think it's appropriate to redraw boundaries--I also think it's appropriate to close schools that are no longer needed, and lots of other things districts do every day. What bothers me most about this is that it's just dang unseemly for parents to have to camp out for a chance at getting a golden ticket.
Such campouts are evidence of a school district planning failure.
We are now in agreement!
Or, as one of my former bosses used to say, "in agreeance."
We have these annual campouts in our area too. Arlington ISD for some reason will only entertain transfers during one week in late April. Some specialty magnets also have parental campouts. I think it's stupid that any parent should have to camp out to find a place for a student.
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