working for the vallejo city "unified" school district i see first hand and hear about the internal goings on from time to time. its no surprise that vallejo's educational system isn't the brightest bulb in the box and funding, or the lack thereof, is always made prevalent. the closing of schools to save money has always been up in the air since i first heard the rumours of hogan closing when i was a freshman there. the thought never occurred to me that it would actually happen until serious talks of late.
although i can see how closing hogan would give the district a million or so to play with, i am very skeptical about that money being used wisely. i know the department i work for, child development, i've been told has always been pushed onto the back burner. so the chances of seeing any of that said money in my department would be very slim, i think. with the closing of the davidson child development center to make room for vallejo charter school [where i subsequently work at], many of the children, ranging from infants to school aged, that are apart of low-income families, the school board had no problem with displacing to other child development sites. the problem with that being, families who live near the davidson area may have to go to different sites depending on how old their child[ren] is[are.] many of these families, being low-income, rely on public transportation to get from place to place. having there children be sent to different sites, which can vary from a few blocks away to across town, only makes it harder for them in the long run.
with that said if the school district/board had no problem with displacing toddlers, i hardly think they'll have a problem with displacing high schoolers, especially if it gives them the opportunity at a million dollars. sad and very upsetting to say but i wouldn't put it past them.
classrooms are over-crowded as is. what would closing hogan do to help that? displacing students does not help them out. the little individual/concentrated small group time that help students progress will practically be non-existent. i wouldn't be surprised if the already high drop-out rate in vallejo climbs even higher. fewer students enrolled= less funding. when enrollment drops, the money that is said to be saved by closing hogan will only let us get so far. our education system is supposed to work with us and for us, not against us.
photos by alamphoto.com
continuing on with our arachnid theme, my co-worker had brought in some spiders she found by her house to work last week because she thought that the kids would like to see them. not being a big fan of the eight legged kind, i practically freaked the fuck out when i saw them and had to catch myself before i had yelled out any obscenities. in an effort to sensor myself i replaced any and all curse words with "creepy." i got over my initial fears and was amazed at the coloring, size and shape of the gigantor spiders. i had never seen anything like it before but come to find out they're supposedly a common variety garden spider and aren't poisonous. all i was thinking was, "what the fuck kind of garden do you keep ms. dee?" hah! pictures and video were taken.
