Reading, Writing and Sex Education

To this.

From this........

 When my children were younger I was involved in their schools doing things like teaching art, cutting, correcting papers and planning holiday parties.  I am realizing that those days are over.  In the past 2 months since school has been back in session I have dealt with more major issues than correcting an addition timed test.  I have dealt with trying to get one of my daughters to be able to take a district wide test over again.  The classroom management was poor during her test and she was unable to do her best for this reason.  This test happens to determine a few things for her as a 5th grader and I feel her testing conditions were unfair.  Then there is middle school sex education.  Yes, that topic. Well, after our then 6th grader sat through this unit in school last year she came home asking all sorts of questions.  I am not one to shy away from a good question but these questions were highly inappropriate.  I asked her why she would even be talking about these things.  Her reply was that they have a secret box where you can write any question down and the teacher will go through and read the question and answer it.  Wonderful, (not really). So now this girl of mine is in 7th grade and her health unit is starting next week. I wrote an email to her teacher letting her know that she would not be participating in this unit and what alternative assignments would she have.  When I saw the requirements for the 2 projects Emma would have during the 3-day period I was shocked.  She will only be missing class for 3 days and the kids in the class will not have any projects.  So I ask you this, is it fair for my daughter to have 2 pretty lengthy projects in place of sitting in class where the others will have nothing?  I think not!  So onward goes the emails until we reach a resolution.

To add on top of this is the recent National attention our school district has been getting over a claim that we fired a student teacher because they were gay. I think the whole thing is ridiculous.  One of my best friends is on the school board and I have seen first-hand what this has done to her.  She can't sleep at night, worrying about our schools.  She cares, which is why she is there. And it really shocks me to see that most of the people on that school board are only there for political reasons.  That is my opinion.  It seems that the schools have become this thing to manipulate for political agendas. The media twists stories to meet their own agendas and what happens is that innocent people end up getting hurt from it.

I used to think cutting and gluing was boring but I'll take it over all of this. I am seriously shocked at how involved I have to be in my child's education.  Gone are the days of our parents when they shipped us off on the bus to school with nary a thought. We need to be proactive in every way and watching what is going on.

End of rant.