VeganMom...stumbling through life: And she's off!

I'm having focus issues tonight, because the LOST finale is on right now. I'm taping it, as always, and we will watch it later tonight--probably around 10:30-ish. I REALLY, really want to just flick the tv on right now and peek, but I will not give in. I'm so distracted, just thinking about it and watching the clock. I, being the impatient spoiler-hound that I am, already know some juicy tidbits about tonight's two-hour finale, but it doesn't remotely lessen my enjoyment of watching. I know who is in the coffin, and I am SO NOT happy about it. They really better go about this coffin issue in the right way, or I will be sulking for the next eight months!

Okay, so let's flash back to D's school 'incident' and why she is no longer attending any classes at Parker this year. I have watched, since D started attending Parker in her freshman year, and become increasingly disheartened and now angry over the way the students are treated, their complete lack of civil rights, and the complete absence of common sense and natural consequences at this school. I have learned that Craig is run in the same way. At least they keep their fuck-ups consistently spread across the school, rather than just limited to one. Let me preface by saying that my child is so not perfect. My issue is less about my child and more about the other children, many of whom are very disempowered and disenfranchised and are very vulnerable to the type of predation that the police and school system are using on these children. First of all, the ONLY time the police have any business disciplining or even talking to children at school is in the case of violence or a legitimate threat of violence, or drug trafficking. Any other discipline or correction should be administered by educators.

The full-time police officers in the high schools here, have seemingly taken over the school discipline. This officer is not an educator. I don't even know that his is educated, as college degrees are not required for city officers. Any dealings I have had with police--even the few who seem decent--do not indicate that the average IQ of officers is over double digits. I respect intelligence, and I respect compassion. I have seen neither in the majority of my encounters with law enforcement. I also believe that people, particularly children, should be given the benefit of the doubt and treated respectfully unless they prove that they don't deserve such treatment.

I have complained about, but put up with, regular "lockdowns", which necessitate stopping all academic activity, while police and K9s go through the lockers, bookbags, and purses. The girls were forced to dump the contents of their purses out on their desks, for male police officers, in front of everyone in the classroom. How humuliating for the girls! The vice-principal did concede that in the future, they would have a female police officer examine the contents of the girls' purses when they were dumped out on the desk. Great. I feel oh so much better knowing that. @@ *those are my eyes rolling, in case you don't spend too much time on the web, like I do.*

D has been on the waiting list for a parking permit since the beginning of second quarter. She is also lazy. This means that frequently, instead of parking off campus and walking the several blocks to get to school, she tries to park in the parking lot and visitor lot and hope she doesn't get a ticket. She has gotten many. They are quite expensive, but they are hers to pay. While I think it's fucking ridiculous to charge the kids lots of money to park their cars at school, I have never taken issue with this policy. This most recent time that D. parked in the visitor lot, the school cop decided she had enough "warnings" (three tickets for the visitor lot at $20 each). He told her she needed to pay $80 immediately at that time or her car would be towed and it would cost more to get it out. Oh, and he also issued ANOTHER $20 ticket. She called me very upset, and I was forced to give my debit card information right then and there. Neither of us could afford that at the moment, but of course that is not their concern. Both the police dept. and Davis Citgo both made a little money off that exchange.

My daughter's locked car, was opened. This is NOT required for towing a car. I know this, because just to make sure, I called both the Jvl PD and the towing company involved to ask them if that would ever be necessary, under any conditions at all. They both told me, unequivocably, "No". The investigation we requested the PD do on this issue was closed, and we were told that the towing company opened it. I don't think so. We will most definitely be pursuing the fact that my child's car was broken into with no warrant. That's a huge infraction of civil liberties!

All of the above--definitely frustrating and concerning, as is the tons of issues that I didn't mention. But here's the most ridiculous of all to me. Common police-state tactics there consist of $375 disorderly conduct tickets for saying "THE F WORD". Really. I have watched this happen to good kids, who definitely cannot afford BS tickets like this. Can you imagine, sending your kid to school for a free public education to have them return home with one or more $375 tickets. For swearing. Teenagers swearing--such a travesty! The notion of charging students money of this amount for swearing--not necessarily at someone--just swearing. D was threatened with such a ticket for asking who the fuck opened her car up (when she found that they had broken into it). That seems like a pretty fair and logical thing to say, considering the circumstances. High school kids and their parents are (or should be) putting money away for college. D is a senior who starts college in the fall. We most definitely cannot afford to be paying nonsense tickets for using WORDS! Many of the other kids who got tickets for this are in the same boat. I personally believe that freedom of speech is very important, and that as long as kids are not being hurtful or disrespectful to others, they should be able to say whatever words they wish. I would not take issue with them disciplining for language issues, IF they were disciplined by an administrator and without financial penalties. Detention, for example, is a reasonable, sensible way to discipline for language. Police involvement is absurd and insulting.

There are still a few of us who remember when we had civil liberties. Those of us who did not willingly sign them away for the false promise of safety. Those of us who are unwilling to let others forget that we are still entitled to the civil liberties Bush and friends ripped away from us. Those of us who will fight to keep the precious little we have left from being taken away, especially from our children.

We made the decision that, although I've endured this joke of a school system for almost four years now, we will not send her for the last two weeks (she only attends there mornings). She continues to attend her awesomely fabulous International Academy in the afternoons. We simply cannot afford to risk sending her for the remainder of the year, as any further fines would come directly out of the college fund. Considering the fact that she's received about a week's worth of education from there over the course of this entire school year, the risk further financial compensation to the JPD is just not worth the "education" she would receive in return. I don't think that many parents can afford that type of education.

I should add, though, that I don't blame the schools for their inability to educate the students well. They are limited by ridiculous government policies (the worst and biggest offender being NCLB) and increasingly limited resources. That is exacerbated by the fact that these already limited resources are divided in such a way that about 20% of the students are receiving about 80% of school funds. Why? Because gov't policies have mandated that the special needs students (many of whom are merely labeled as such and are really victims of crappy, lazy parents) and ESL students. They all must be accomodated in every way possible, including full-time one-on-one aids in many cases. That means, in addition to the "regular" resources that these students consume, one individual student requiring a full-time personal aid costs an additional $40,000 approximately. Many of these students are profoundly incapicitated and uneducable, but the parents have the option to send them to school full time and receive free babysitting services free. What a deal. The meager amount of remaining funds are divided up amongst all the other students--the ones who wil be employable in the future, running our country and such. Then we end up with schools who have no money for paper, toilet paper, books, etc. The teachers are bound by increasingly ridiculous mandates like NCLB, which forces them to teach only for testing, rather than educating. Throw in much too high student-teacher ratios, sprinkle in lots of kids coming from rotten households with poor parenting, and you have a guaranteed recipe for a collapsing and ineffective school system.

Rant over. Time for LOST!

I'll at least end on a positive and share some more pretty gard