Even though the stated intent of the founders of the modern compulsory government schools — men like John Dewey and Horace Mann — was to wrest children away from their parents at the earliest possible age so as to remove them from the \u201cforeign and un-American\u201d influences of the lower-class home, what\u2019s the most loudly repeated excuse, today, for the failure of these schools?<\/p>\n
Why, the fact that parents, especially low-income parents, don\u2019t cooperate and support the schools — they don\u2019t force the kids to do their homework; they don\u2019t \u201ctake enough interest\u201d in their kids\u2019 education, etc.<\/p>\n
We certainly know what would happen if parents refused to send their kids to school, at all. In most states, unless you provide some evidence that your child is being \u201cproperly\u201d tutored at home or in a private school, you can have your children taken away for that. It\u2019s a crime.<\/p>\n
So what happens when poor, black moms do precisely what everyone says they should — show lots of concern, in fact move heaven and earth in order to get their kids to attend the best public school available?<\/p>\n
If they\u2019re \u201cthe wrong kind\u201d of parents, our local school boards respond by arresting them and charging them with the criminal offense of \u201clarceny,\u201d of course.<\/p>\n
Back in January, I reported the case of Kelly Williams-Bolar, an Ohio mother of two who was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation for sending her kids to school in a district in which they did not live — \u201cstealing\u201d the cost of their schooling.<\/p>\n
Williams-Bolar is black. She was convicted of registering her two girls as living with the kids\u2019 grandfather so she could drive them daily — at her own expense — to attend better schools in nearby Copley township, instead of condemning them to the crummier schools which such black children \u201care supposed\u201d to attend, closer to the Akron housing projects where they live.<\/p>\n
Need we ask how many illegal aliens have been jailed in this country for sending their kids to our superior (at least, formerly superior) tax-funded schools, instead of the lesser facilities available back in the one and only school district where they can claim legal residence — in Mexico, Guatemala, or wherever?<\/p>\n
Meantime, here comes the next one:<\/p>\n
Tanya McDowell, a 33-year-old homeless single mom who sleeps on a friend\u2019s couch in nearby Bridgeport when it\u2019s available, but otherwise lives in her van — and yes, she\u2019s black — was due in court in Norwalk, Conn., Wednesday, accused of \u201cstealing\u201d $15,686 worth of education for her son.<\/p>\n
The 6-year-old boy was enrolled at Norwalk\u2019s Brookside Elementary School between January and McDowell\u2019s April 14 arrest.<\/p>\n
One wonders if it might not be possible to get 15 weeks of quality tutoring for less than $15,686, even in high-cost Connecticut. (If McDowell were charged based on what the schooling was WORTH, in other words, rather than what it cost taxpayers, one wonders if this would still be \u201cgrand larceny.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The self-declared homeless woman is charged with felony larceny for allegedly using her baby sitter\u2019s address to enroll her boy in the better quality Norwalk schools.<\/p>\n
The charge can carry a prison sentence of up to 20 years — equivalent to what Connecticut gives murderers.<\/p>\n
Ms. McDowell\u2019s attorney contends 26 other families have also purposely enrolled their children in Norwalk schools under wrong addresses — but only McDowell was arrested.<\/p>\n
Why would that be?<\/p>\n
Sheila Mosby, a former Norwalk school board member, can\u2019t think of a single instance of Norwalk ever treating anyone else like this, reports Connecticut Post Columnist MariAn Gail Brown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon for someone to use a baby sitter\u2019s address to get their child into a different school,\u201d Mosby says. \u201cThere are a number of cases like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet none of the parents in those 26 other cases have been arrested on a felony charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ordinary way schools handle such suspicions is to notify parents in writing that they are suspected of fraudulently enrolling their children and allow them to defend their action either in writing or at an administrative hearing,\u201d columnist Brown reports.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not a poor, picked-upon homeless person,\u201d responds Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia. \u201cThis is an ex-con and somehow the city of Norwalk is made into the ogre in this. She has a checkered past at best.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDowell was arrested in November for marijuana possession and previously served an 18-month prison term for robbery and weapons charges.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t make any excuses for robbery, though it doesn\u2019t take much for a poor, black person to draw a \u201cweapons charge\u201d in \u201chave-a-gun, go-to-jail\u201d Southern New England.<\/p>\n
But the question was whether we want low-income parents to show more concern about the quality of schooling their kids get, and how we\u2019re going to reward them if they do.<\/p>\n
In a country where most folks can recite stories about star athletes \u201cgoing to live\u201d at the home of an aunt or uncle so they could play on a championship high-school team, somehow \u201cjail\u201d was not the first answer that came to mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even though the stated intent of the founders of the modern compulsory government schools — men like John Dewey and Horace Mann — was to wrest children away from their parents at the earliest possible age so as to remove them from the \u201cforeign and un-American\u201d influences of the lower-class home, what\u2019s the most loudly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-cs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}