School

The headline reads “Florida school tackles chronic absenteeism with unconventional model — and it’s working,” but that’s a lie. This is a carefully written story that not only ignores the facts, it downright fabricates them.

First, let’s look at the most obvious lie- that the school is working. The school’s graduation rate is 9 percent, less than one in ten. Even with their “largest graduating class yet” they are graduating less than half of the students who are currently still there. The student body here is about 314 students, with more than 200 of them being 12th graders. Who cares if you graduate from a program like this? We have public schools who are graduating students that are literally illiterate. I once had a student in the 10th grade who wrote assignments like this one.

More than a third of Florida’s students are chronically absent. This school is intended for students who won’t go to school. That’s a real problem, especially when you remove the kids who at the top of the class- the college prep kids, the ones who are dual enrolled, the honor students. I don’t understand how this school makes a difference, since when the kids DO come to this school, they are only there for half a day. This is nothing more than a daycare center that awards a diploma for merely being present. The students can’t even meet that absurdly low standard.

Making things worse, students and parents actively try to get the teachers who DO hold kids to a standard fired.

One other thing that this article flat out misrepresents- 85% of the student body of this school is not white, yet the interviewed the white girl. I’m guessing it was to conceal the fact that it is a nearly homogenous school.

This entire school is a waste of money, and only perpetuates the cycle of poverty and lack of education. I have a more cost effective solution:

For students under the age of 15:

• If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school.
• If a student misses more than 10 school days in a semester, then that fine increases to a maximum of $1,000. If the 10 day absence is due to an illness of the child, then there will be a hearing where a panel will review the doctor’s explanation of the illness. Also: If the ruling is that the child’s absence is unexcused by illness, the parent doesn’t get any public assistance- no welfare, no food stamps, nothing. Get your kids to school, or we aren’t going to pay you to raise more little drains on society.
• If a student misses more than 30 days in an entire school year, then the parent can be sentenced to up to 30 days in jail and additional fines. Additionally, the parent is not eligible for any public assistance for 3 years.

For students over the age of 15:

• If a student is tardy to school more than 5 times in a semester, then the student loses campus parking privileges. Take the bus.
• If a student skips or otherwise misses 15 hours of any single class in a single school year, they will automatically fail the course and their parents would be subject to a fine of not more than $500. The student’s driver’s license is suspended for not less than 6 months.
• If a student misses more than 5 school days in a quarter, then the parents will be subject to a monetary fine of up to $250, unless they can produce a doctor’s note outlining an illness that prevents the child from coming to school.
• If a student misses more than 10 days in a school semester, they will be subject to a hearing that will determine whether or not they are defacto dropouts. If they are ruled to be dropouts, the student will be removed from taxpayer funded school and will not be able to re-enroll in school at taxpayer expense. Wanna skip school and waste money? Do it on your own dime.
• Dropouts are not eligible for any public assistance for at least 3 years, or until 21 years of age, whatever comes first. You already had public assistance in the form of a free education, and you aren’t going to use your failure as a means of getting money to be an even bigger waste of time than you already are. Stop being a loser. We are deporting tons of illegal immigrants, and someone has to harvest the crops- you can go pick lettuce or something.

Harsh? It’s no harsher than what the government will do to me if I refuse to pay all of the taxes that are the source of this wasted money. It’s time we stop wasting all of this money.