no child left a dime
many people have asked
how they can help.
my heart is full from the kindness
that has poured forth towards
the well-being of my shorties
and the continuation of our school.
the thought of our school system
receiving letters from around the
country is crazygood.
a few of you have written letters and
i thankyouthankyouthankyou.
your thoughtfulness blows me away
in this day and age.
i am posting this
so that if you feel you want to write
to our school system and
tell them that you think
our schools need more funding, you can.
living in the neighborhood with the highest
murder-rate in baltimore city,
these children are, in fact, being
left behind.
our children are
too familiar with
having things taken away.
plain fact:
poor neighborhoods have poor schools.
and they don't fight for what they
don't think they deserve.
we want to change that.
if you are tired of our children
being forgotten and the right
to an EQUAL education for our
city schools being a motto instead of
a reality,
then write.
baltimore city has a motto: "believe."
remind them to believe in our schools.
and then, write to your local school system
and remind them to do the same thing.
email me: VWSamIam@aol.com
and i will give you all the addresses
and other information that you may need.
we live in a wealthy school district which means that we also pay an outrageous amount of property tax. in recent years funds have been taken from the wealthier school districts in our city to give to the inner city school districts (and with the influx of katrina victims in our state the wealthy school districts are going to feel the pinch even more). what i find disconerting is that the funds taken have been used to build sports stadiums rather than towards what i think is an education. to add to that our school district sends an annual form to the parents asking for donations because our own school district is suffering. sheesh, what a concept! we homeschool but we don't have a problem with the idea of donating. but what i do have a gripe about is my tax money being used towards building stadiums. i would also be kidding myself if tax funds or any kind of funds from the government would reach those most needing it especially with a war bill hanging over our heads. personally i think funds need to come from the people without any connections from the government. but maybe i'm being unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteI think part of the problem is in the funding of education through property taxes. It automatically creates inequities. Are children in low-income areas less-deserving of resources because their quality of housing is also sub-standard? I do believe that many school systems mismanage funds (ours included.) I give money to our school, but I would never give it to the system. One of the things our school is trying to do (I teach with Ms. Kathleen) is look for waste in the system and ask for that money directly in order to use it responsibly.
ReplyDeleteBut at the end of the day, our school system is racially segregated and unequal to the other school districts in our state. 1954 was a long time ago and separate still isn't equal. And I can promise, no stadiums are being built for our city schools.