SFUSD A MESS

The City and County of San Francisco should learn from past experience that it would be better to focus on local leadership when it comes to our schools. We seem NOT to have learned this basic fact when it comes to the welfare of our children and more the good of the parents. Constituents of San Francisco we need to take charge of our leadership and make good stuff happen in our Public Schools. Today the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) is in a mess. Families are leaving San Francisco in droves just because no one really cares about our children. The best way to check this out is by visiting our High and Middle School and doing some investigative finding. Talk to the children and see what they have to say about the school and the education offered at every level. Ask the children about the facilities offered and go check the cafeteria and the restroom, the gym and the playgrounds, the classrooms and the state of the lockers. A mere perusal of the above conditions will give any one a better idea then the long hours spent at any SFUSD Board meetings where most people bark at one another. We have this perennial issue with the School Superintendent and this is not the first time. We pay these so called super qualified Administrators big sums of money, brag that we have brought the best talent to our City, and then after they arrive proceed to work with them as if we have hired a zoo trainer. No one really cares about the Education of our children that decides to play politics and get huge sums of money as part of compensation and other frills while the State of Affair as it pertains to our children in the SFUSD goes literally to dogs. Of course the first victims are the children, the parent's shouts and scream at the SFUSD meetings do not contribute positively to the situation at hand. We have serious crime in our Public School and the Safety and Health of our children at stake. Most parents will not allow the Safety of lives of their children to be compromised. No one should second guess when it comes to the welfare of our children. The worst damage is done with the blaming game. Notice good teachers do not blame anyone they just make good stuff happen. Ever notice that good well trained children come from homes where parents are educated and train their children in civility. Notice how ill trained parents send ill mannered children to school and adversely impact thousands of citizens in the course of the child's life as a youth and later as an adult. Now imagine if this child is incarcerated and makes going in and out of jail a life time hobby? SFUSD is really funded by the State of California. At one time many neighborhoods willing gave their best to the neighborhood schools and always with pride. Many remember the football games, the reunions, the graduations, the outings one of a kind, exhibitions, and the grandeur and more memorable incidents at the class level. When a child is at school it is about learning and getting a good education. Most of the child's life is spent at home and so with a combination of good home love and care with lots of focused tuition and the child going to school every child should have the best of both worlds. However we all know that NOT to be the case. Parents work hard and when they tired they have no time for themselves less for the children. Now imagine if the child or children have single parents. The chores and just basic life schedules and work leave little time for the children. The cliché has been "we give quality time" - but in reality it means a little of my time. We should be giving more and not less to the detriment of our children. It is always great to know much about any child when you win the child's confidence and they spill out the beans. The reality of what children endure today is horrendous. The get bombarded by so much rubbish from cyber space and the innuendos from their peers that it makes it difficult for most children to know what is real life and what is fantasy. This fact is all the more inherent in girls that take life more seriously and are often confused. Boys make mistakes are bold and some come out of life experience unscathed and others pay dearly for their crimes. Drugs and peer pressure to acquire worldly good - materialism pushed to its extreme make many of youth - puppets of cyber space and idols that live in a fantasy world. San Francisco has a population of about 760,000 and slowly many families are living town. They just cannot manage with children living in a very expensive City where Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors talk the talk but cannot walk the walk. Half the Supervisors are gay and some are single and have no clue what our children are going through in their daily lives. In a couple of months many Public schools will be shut down. One of them a dream school that just opened christened Willie L. Brown Jr. Academy. This is a joke we create this Dream School only to give a taste of Nightmares to our children. Imagine a child stating for the rest of her or his life that after attending a Dream School for a year it went to the dogs. Who will take credit for such a mess? Arlene Ackerman may make the grades with some but for some reason I have not found this woman to be sincere and trusting. Twice I went out of my way to attend two meetings at the Southeast Facility situated at 1800 Oakdale and twice the woman chose not to come to the meetings. Once she sent her aide who stated that Arlene was very busy. The second time around there was no explanation just the conspicuous absence of a School Superintendent that should know better. Arlene has divided the community and the SFUSD Board is worse off with her having set foot in San Francisco. She leaves us with a lot of severance pay, the self-defeating pride, our schools in worse shape, and the aura of divisiveness floating all over the place. In the end when you analyze the situation it is about politics, money and more money. Kelly and the older senior SFUSD Board members have been in place for too long and resting on past laurels that stink to high heaven. Time to move off their asses with that stale pride and make room for vision, accountability, transparency, and educational programs that bring the best of our children to the fore. Every year the old guard will stick to time proven principals and clichés that do not work. The SFUSD Board meeting are BOOORING and if some one does not get that it is time they get it. The barking at these meetings must stop and so the old fashioned way the meetings are conducted complete with its Sanctimonious aged parliamentarian. The SFUSD meetings are held at 7 pm and go for hours on end with each group throwing arrows in the air and just be very careful where they may land. Our children attend these meetings and they love the fun fare but the real scars that are left for ever is the lack of love and the worst type of education meted in very poor environments. There must be stability when it comes to education and the SFUSD with its changing moronic Superintendents from the Rojas' to the Ackerman's' have soiled the dictates of higher learn and thrown good education into the wind hovering above the worst type of cesspool. Recently the San Francisco Board of Supervisors mostly in hibernation is determined to have a say. The Queen that is Ammiano and the dump arrogant Sophie Maxwell. The man that chases his tail Bevan Dufty and the aspiring State Assembly Fiona Ma who is as single as single can be and far removed from any parent or parenting. You have Elsbernd who has learnt little from his Jesuit education and has contributed even less. Peskin has time for Telegraph parrots and less for parenting or issues that benefit our youth. Then you have the air head giggling Michaela Alioto-Pier one wonders where she stands on pertinent issues and that includes education of our children in San Francisco. Half the Supervisors are moronic in their basic understanding of education. You can see it and witness their demeanor - the most apparent the man that wags his tongue Joke McGoldrick. Calls himself a teacher - pity the youth that had him bark at them. Mayor Gavin Newsom and his SPIN in the MEDIA will take him so far. Recently he has been saying that he plays a critical role in the SFUSD. I have never ever seen him at any SFUSD meetings to defend our children nor to save our schools. I have seen Chris Daly and a few others that I will not name. We continue to change the names of our schools once it was Pelton, then Burton, now Thurgood Marshall the same school different names. Does that tell you anything? Now study the curricula and you will get a better insight as to the ability to discern and less to teach our children in our Public Schools. Some teachers really require to be tested in our Public Schools and others to be sent for a long vacation given a one way ticket to chill out to Alaska. There are good teachers and the best ones that work hard and make good stuff happen without much fun fare. These few teachers are our saving grace and there are principals like Balboa's Ms. Patricia Gray and few others that I am getting to know. I will not be bold to praise them lest power goes to their head. I am cool with the youth from many schools and feel their pain. How can youth continue to deal with in competency in and out every day for months on end in middle and high schools of learning - most of them Public Schools that do not deliver? I continue to investigate even as I facilitate and try to give some to our youth on the field, in the classroom, at focus meetings. Some need help and there is a succor with the Lord's help. We have good men of faith like Joe O'Donoghue and Joe Cassidy. These men walk the walk unlike the crooks that take and take and never give. We have John Nauer that devotes a lot of his life to youth. Rannon Ross from the Brown Bombers. Coach Carl Sullivan trying to make some sense at Mission High with Principal Kevin Truitt. Coach Phil Ferrigno from Abraham Lincoln High School with Principal Ronald Pang. Balboa High School Head Coach Keith Minor and Principal Patricia Gray. It's all good. Public Schools have delivered before because there was a purpose in mind and the welfare of any child was paramount. The SFUSD has become a corporation and really with all the paper work- education and things education have been relegated to the dust bin of incivility.

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