Houston school district to turn libraries into disciplinary centers

It seems like every generation complains about the younger generation. I know boomers
Certainly considered Gen X to be troubled who weren’t willing to work hard and distracted by drugs and video games while The Greatest Generation considered Boomers to be self indulgent, undisciplined and also on drugs.

There are certainly problems with kids now but I don’t think it’s as bad as many make it out to be. The college interns I have working for me and the judo students I coach frequently impress me with their willingness to work and learn.

This might be a self selected group though but I don’t think it things are as bad as we frequently here.

 

Based on the headline, I clicked on this thread genuinely thinking it was going to be an article from something like The Onion.

 

Those are all nice thoughts. I'd like to see examples that show that throwing money at schools produces results in a significant portion of students that come from the backgrounds you talk about.

Reducing class sizes by hiring more teachers is the only solution you suggest I agree with. But that is still dependent on the people populating those classrooms. I also think we could do a lot more to retain quality teachers.

However, no amount of counselors or therapists is going to fix broken homes and communities. That's the money pit that has politicians salivating.

 

How many schools have you been in? I've been in over 30 different schools, and they all have the same problems. They have too many students, and not enough classrooms. Special Education is always understaffed and overcrowded as well. Yes, it takes more money for more schools, more teachers, and more aides. The less student to teacher ratio is the definitely a better approach to classroom management and teaching. That's where throwing money into schools is needed, but it isn't happening. Oh, but they do throw tons of money into football, coaches and sports.

All the schools I've been in have one counselor, too many students with issues, and not enough support outside or inside the classrooms. Politicians just want to use money for other stuff, shoving education to the back burner and giving vouchers to let private business venture schools deal with it. It's the Texas Republican mindset. Don't waste money on stuff that doesn't bring a profit to the state or put money into their pockets.

Counselors and therapists can't fix broken homes or communities, and that's not what I said. They can help the children with discipline problems so severe that they disrupt classes and act out though. They are better equipped professionally to get down to the root of the problem that causes children to act out. They can help them with coping mechanisms, and strategies to cope with problems, or give them the guidance and positive reinforcement they need. You can't support 400 students without more counselors.

A Discipline Center should NEVER replace a school library. That's ridiculous. Literacy is crucial, and books that interest children are a great way to help them with that. Literacy is the most important skill in education and life!

 

“The system broken, and the school's closed, the prisons open…”. - Kanye West “Power”

 

This could have gone here.

As for the changes to the library, it's just one little spat in what is going to be a protracted war with the TEA over the abrogation of our right to vote. Every change Miles makes is going to be an offense to Houstonians because his employment in HISD is an offense in itself. There is no way he can improve school performance while fighting with city leadership and getting knocked by the press for racism. Which sucks. Feels like a hostage taking -- I don't want them to succeed in taking away our vote, but I sure as hell don't want them to fail our children.

 

Harold Dutton, Democratic state representative, was trying to get HISD to fix Wheatley High School, which is rated poorly. He got this law passed that if one school was failing the state can take over the district. It was a bad idea.

 

I had forgotten about that.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-p...nt-school-district-state-takeover-mike-miles/

Yikes.

 

Agreed, it was a bad idea.

 

@deb4rockets

I do agree that investing in more teachers is worthwhile. I disagree with investing in therapists, counselors, behavior specialists, etc. I wouldn't even recommend them to adults. That's where I come from in regard to them.

 

@Jontro
@rocketsjudoka @Os Trigonum

might as well make 50 the new superintendent
He’ll make sure the kids learn math and their abcef g gg units

 

How do they republicans benefit from this? Shouldn't this, in theory, make people want to vote blue more to try and get this sort of thing reversed?

I can see the need to take students out of the normal classrooms for some time. We had a place called "ALC" when I was growing up (alternative learning center) where kids would go if they were acting bad repeatedly. But you have to be pretty bad to go there (like fighting with the teacher or other students all the time bad). I was actually just talking with my sister how non-AP classes in high school were a joke because of all the students just not listening, and how some teachers just don't even really know how (or want to know how) to teach. I literally had one class where we mostly played cards for money in the back.

If the libraries weren't being used, I guess I understand. Optics are bad though and they should have just expanded some of their other alternative learning centers.

 

Oh, it's definitely a slow play strategy. The move itself doesn't make voting age people happy in the short term. But it allows them to implement their slant in education from an early age, much like Florida will be doing state wide.

 

I think the benefit is to reinforce the idea among small town voters that the Democrat run cities are mismanaged- so much so that the state has to step in and clean things up. I'm sure there are republicans in the HISD footprint who are happy for the state to take away their voting rights because they think Democrats are screwing up public education.

 

Sounds like a super slow play.

 

There's another HISD thread but I digress, this DIOT.

Removing libraries is a two pronged plan by the GOP. Make the poor kids more ignorant and less likely to understand voting and degrade public schools to a point where people are clamoring for a school voucher program, which will feed in to for-profit schools that the GOP gets a huge handout from.

At any rate, this is an abhorrent thing that the GOP has done, and if you vote for them, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Technology won't phase out paper books any time soon. Kids absolutely love books, and many kids can't afford the electronic devices needed to get books, even free from the library, as well as the process being cumbersome. Source: My wife is a school librarian.

 

Did you learn about voting from your school library?

I agree that Republicans want a school voucher program, but there is no need to close some libraries to get it. The schools will either continue to get worse, or they could make it look like they got worse. Democrats can't say schools are fine because they also want them to keep needing reforms. After all, that's the way they get money and votes. At the end of the day, they're fighting over the same money pit and the same votes.

Kids loving book is fine. Nowadays, kids who read can read online. More and more schools are providing technology to each student. Even elementary students. But again, I wonder what repurposing libraries will mean for the actual books.

 

The books will remain on the shelves and schools will use an honor system to check them out. I'd wager in 3-5 years those shelves will be pretty empty. Those books will be lost, stolen, and simply forgotten to be returned. Yes, many schools have a 1:1 student to laptop ratio, but those school devices can't go home with the students. Plus, you're limited to the digital library the school and district have purchased. You want kids reading beyond the school, which they should be, you need well-stocked libraries with certified librarians than can help them to find reading material that best suits their interests.

And just a quick Google shows countless studies proving a positive correlation between schools with a robust library program and higher test scores. Outcomes like that make the decision to eliminate librarians all the more vexing.

 

So was changing the ideology of the Supreme Court...with these things the point is to slowly chip away so you don't notice until it's too late. It's a disgrace what the state is doing in the HISD.

 

The takeover is a disaster. Now they are hiring unqualified and uncertified teachers. That is the worst solution possible.