This would almost be funny if it weren't so tragically true.
Connie
From the San Francisco Chronicle | Feedback
A simple solution would avert the budget disaster facing California's
schools: We should declare every public school to be a prison. The kids
would understand.
Details need to be worked out, but I want every child in California to
be given a 13 year prison sentence at age 5, with the possibility of a
four-year extension.
That way, the $7,000 the state spends per student each year could
immediately be raised to $27,000 -- what the state spends on each inmate
annually. And our criminally under-funded schools would qualify for the
only category in the governor's proposed budget that's slated to get
more money this year.
Gov. Gray Davis is asking for a 1 percent budget increase for the
California Department of Corrections. Meanwhile, our schools are
flinching at threats of abusive slashes in state support.
Given the alternative of layoffs, more crowded classrooms, fewer
teachers' aides and disappearing supplies, school officials should jump
for joy at the chance for their district's schools to be transformed
into prisons and their students to become inmates.
My daughter's middle school in San Francisco would be renamed Herbert
Hoover Juvenile Correctional Institution. Her brother's elementary
school could be Buena Vista Juvenile Redirective Ranch. The university
from which my sister just graduated would become the California Honor
Farm at Davis.
The benefits are many. Elementary schools in San Francisco haven't been
staffed with school nurses for many years. Recent court cases, however,
have set
minimal levels for acceptable health care for prisoners. If schools
suddenly became prisons, students would be entitled to the same
health-care standards.
Prison nurses would step in and school secretaries, administrators and
teachers' aides could get back to educating --
instead of tending to the endless parade of students needing Band-Aids,
ice packs, lice checks and help with their asthma inhalers.
Labor relations and staff morale would improve. Math, science and
English teachers could sign on as members of the California Correctional
Peace Officers Association, which represents prison guards. The union,
which has given $3 million to Davis campaigns since 1998, has the clout
to keep salaries growing and benefits flowing.
The prison guards union's Web site used to brag that its members earned
higher salaries than teachers in California. That boast, wisely, has
disappeared from the site. Nonetheless, if our schools became prisons
and our teachers were covered by the same union contracts as prison
guards, educators would get the immediate raises they deserve.
Prison guards deserve every penny they get. It's a tough and stressful
line of work, often unappreciated by the inmates and their families.
Sound like a teacher's job?
From Lakeshore Elementary Jail to Lowell State Penitentiary, wardens
and their little inmates should move quickly to get formal status under
the California Department of Corrections. Otherwise, county hospitals
and nursing homes might beat them to it.
Margo Freistadt is a copy editor at The Chronicle.
--
"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will
get you through times of no libraries." Anne Herbert
Connie Newhan
Library Services Supervisor
Tustin Unified School District
300 South C Street
Tustin, CA 92780
(714) 730-7398
(714) 573-9715 (FAX)
cnewhan@tustin.k12.ca.us
--
"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will
get you through times of no libraries." Anne Herbert
Connie Newhan
Library Services Supervisor
Tustin Unified School District
300 South C Street
Tustin, CA 92780
(714) 730-7398
(714) 573-9715 (FAX)
cnewhan@tustin.k12.ca.us
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