Poor Kids Banned from School Carnival - NY USA

a reply to: TKDRL

the guy in charge is giving a make up carnival. he didn't know 100 kids were excluded...he said if he had known he would have paid for them....

situation could have been handled better....

originally posted by: dawnstar
a reply to: MikeA

we sold chocolate bars when I was in school....and well it was optional if we even wanted to take part in selling them parents really weren't made to feel obligated to buy them. sure there were awards for the top sellers but well those who didn't sell anything didn't suffer the consequences. one of the things we raised funds for was the prom and well no one was denied the priviledge of going simply because they didn't sell enough candy!!!

I don't know if that was the way it was done for your school, but I do know how it is here as far as the prom goes. Here if you want to attend the prom you have to buy a ticket, and I'm willing to bet that is true for most high school. And if you don't buy a ticket you won't get in to the prom period. This is something that every student and parent here knows. My point is that I'm sure the parents of those K thru 5 kids also knew about this, if we assume that they knew about the ticket sales in the first place. Everyone seems to want to blame the school for what happened, and so it's up to the school to do something about it. But in truth it's up to the parents to act on behalf of their child. Too many people send their kids to school with the idea that their kid is some how special and the teachers will pay close attention to them 100% of the time, and that's just not the way it is. If we assume that every parent got a copy of the notice, and knew what would happen if they did not buy a ticket, then if they could not afford the $10 it's up to them to do something about it, NOT the schools. For me I agree with what someone else wrote. The most likely thing that happened was that either those parents never got the notice or just didn't want to pay the $10. Either way it's not up to the school to make sure that every kid had a ticket. Since 900 of them did buy one I can only assume that the school did what they could do. The rest was up to the kids and their parents. After all the reason for having a fund raiser is to raise funds, not to break even. The kids might be too young to understand this concept, but the parents should be aware of it.

a reply to: MikeA
oh we had to pay an admission to get into the prom also, but we also had fundraisers during the year also, to help keep the cost of those tickets down. and no, I didn't go to my prom, it was an expense that not even I could justify. my niece went to hers, my sister took her all over the place, buffalo, ny city, rochester, syracuse, and on and on looking for the perfect prom dress just to have my niece decide to have one custom made by a local seamstress.

but with proms you are talking about young adults practically, here we are talking about grade school kids. at that age, I didn't see the world like I did in high school... We were poor and quite frankly, it wasn't that noticeable. my parents couldn't afford healthcare for me but well my doctor lived across the street from us and his daughter was friends with me. I'd pick stop by her house everyday and we'd walk to school together. I remember getting quite a bit of medical treatment in those early hours, and well sometimes when I came home after school my mom would give me medications that the doctor gave her during the day, mainly for the ear infections he picked up in the morning because I told him my ear hurt when he asked how I was feeling.

guess what I am saying is that everyone of those kids will learn about the inequalities in life before they graduate, mainly in middle in high school, there is no reason to introduce it to the kids at such an early age.

a reply to: Grimpachi

moving up parties??
i have a solution
no more lame ass moving up party?

why does every little accomplishment warrant special recognition and parties and such.

when i 'graduated' kindergarten nothing special happened. next school year i started 1st grade. thats it.

i think there are far too many celebrations and parties these days....

originally posted by: research100
a reply to: TKDRL

the guy in charge is giving a make up carnival. he didn't know 100 kids were excluded...he said if he had known he would have paid for them....

situation could have been handled better....

The Carnival owner offered.

Has the school made it happen yet?

a reply to: Mugly

by the time they would get to their high school graduation it seems that all those others would kind of take the specailness out of what in my opinion is the most special of them all!!!
I can't remember, we might have had something for our kindergarten graduation, I imagine it wasn't much if we did since well, our kindergarten was in a small two room building that sat apart from the elementary school- it was called the chicken coop and I imagine there are some chicken coops that were bigger.
My kids had graduations out of pre-school but not much money was sunk into them, the refreshments were provided by the parents and well the kid's diplomas were printed up through the school computer's printer.

to listen to how everyone complain about the quality of education these days and well seeing first hand the quality of some of the graduates today, I have to say, I think we got better education in those chicken coops and elementary schools that had ceilings that occasionally dropped their dust and plaster from the ceiling onto us! for some reason, I don't think the amount of money and the expensive fun really has done much to improve the standard of education. it just makes the cost of raising children higher and quite frankly the kids might have enjoyed their carnival but well if the money came from the grocery fund and the kids are now skimping on meals because of it well, I think it would have done more harm than good!

It's inappropriate to give the kids dessert before they have been giving a meal!

I want a Ferrari, but I cant buy one, .... and I have to look at all the other ferraris driving around, I think Ill start a fundraiser.

a reply to: Realtruth

This isn't particularly surprising and no amount of outrage can change it. Raise children who will assert themselves against toothless authorities and work around the meaningful ones- these children could have simply raided that carnival- walked right in chanting "screw you, suspend us and we'll have our own carnival"- and some teacher would break down crying and grab one of them and try to drag them back to the auditorium, and after a lawsuit they could afford all the carnival they like.

My teacher thought he'd pavlov us with a box of donuts and I got caught on the wrong side of that. Aside from serving as an attention getter for those who hadn't turned in something or another he used it to make some really interesting point related to it having to do with disparities between North and South during the civil war by giving the rest of us left over bagels from the cafeteria... at which point I got up from my desk, calmly said over his lecture that I will now reenact Quantrill's Raiders, walked to his desk, took the box with the remaining donuts back to my desk, and started eating one and offering the rest around. He just stared at me and finally shook it off- he never did respond. Of course that was the 90s- the odds of a kid hurting a teacher were way way higher than the odds of a teacher having a kid tazed by the police back then.

My point is that I don't think this is either new or a simple matter of accidental coldness. It's part of the indoctrination, which is a live fire exercise in exploitation and unreasonable authority. That's why schools are being pressured to teach to tests- there is no real process at work to interrupt, which allows government and industry to barge in and access your children without creating any kind of noticeable disturbance that would make you cry foul.

Nobody ever wonders, "gee, why hasn't little Johnny told me what he learned today, maybe I should ask if he spent the whole day being recruited into a pyramid scheme in the lunch room that will result in me soon getting an unofficial collection notice saying my child can't graduate until such and such magazine company gets its money" so they don't fight in time to win, and junior learns that daddy can't understand or deal with the authorities, he just ignores them until they stop him and then he swats them with money so he can keep going, and junior learns to do that to.

I saw this stuff and it was CLEARLY intentional- you can tell when you see how they make their petty points and examples- it's like watching a bad actor try to portray a dominatrix when you refuse to play along with a school officials BS and they try to put the squeeze on you.

Even in the 80s and 90s when I went through that crap, school was EASILY 5% captive audience marketing time.

First day of school you read the rules outloud, then you read the list of things you are required to buy, then you get told how they will do everything in their power to make you buy a replacement text book but there are some hoops you can jump through that will make them let you off the hook to maintain the appearance of propriety. You do this SIX TIMES for an hour each. Nothing else happens. Buy this stuff. Here's the extra expenses you can incur. Here's how we twist up your whole life if you think you can ignore us. Now if you have any questions raise your hand and I'll write down your name and start working on you first thing tomorrow.

Your School ID doubles as a coupon, and the photo on that ID gets paid for on picture day, and when you get the ID, and when you need a replacement ID, AND when you get your yearbook.

Hour classes were 55 minutes long, allowing an additional 5 minutes to line up at a snackbar between classes. Then there was lunch when the food chain deliveries arrived at the snack bar carts.

We lost an entire days lessons to JOSTENS for crying out crap.

Sex education? Every year for 4 years- every time it was just product samples and being told about all the things we need to buy now because we aren't sweet smelling babies anymore. They finally got around to actually discussing that diagram of a flaccid penis on the 5th year, in 9th grade- up until that point it was only in the room to make sure we were happy to talk about deodorant instead.

a reply to: The Vagabond

Wow that has to be the best anti-social rant I've read in a while.

a reply to: MikeA

Yeah I did have fun with it. I sometimes mine these posts for premises to use in my standup act. I'm pretty sure that thing about product placement in sex ed will make the cut.

But seriously, stripped down of all the flavor and hatred that I would wrap it up in, couldn't most people objectively agree that 1. the education process is being increasingly commercialized, and 2. the money generated by that is not serving to solve serious problems in the system.

And if we had a discussion of the merits of public schooling vs alternatives, wouldn't the public school get credit for "socializing" kids- getting kids to fit in with strangers and authority figures- while the alternatives would boast the advantage in actual teaching?

So it's funny because it's true. A good anti social rant should have surprisingly few holes in it like that. The name of the game is to be a giant @$$ and squeeze in as much crap as you can without stretching it so thin that you get ripped a new one, then you punch it up with dirty metaphors if you can.

a reply to: Realtruth

I have similar memories of the Catholic school in my town holding their annual carnival and we'd plead to go but only did a couple of times.

I also sat alone in class because we couldn't afford field trips. I guess it's even worse now when I hear other people talk about how sad it is. Back then it was sad but you get used to hearing no, to the point where you're surprised when you actually get to go somewhere or do something.

I wonder if this is a school in a affluent neighbor hood? Poor kids are not treasured in these environment....I had sent my son to a private school...BIG MISTAKE.....I was a waitress at the time , my son received a great child support and I wanted to use it on him. A child came up to him and said," I'd invite you to my birthday party but I don't think you could afford the gift." Each vacation these children went some where with their parent. My son was lucky to go to the Zoo. They made him feel so poor he is 24 and still brings it up....He went there from K-6....then I got wise and pulled him. Brought him to our inter city school....he loved it....I had late children and they will never go to private school. My girls 6 and 13 are receiving a better education and are having a good time at school....Our district is considered under income , so much so, all of the children receive free lunch....you don't have to prove you need it we received a grant for this...No child is excluded, my daughters friend wanted to join band, family could not afford a instrument, the school gave her one. they have great programs for these kids plus speakers that come in that tell success stories of how they worked real hard in school and became from a underprivileged child to a professional.

a reply to: Realtruth

This story is a microcosm of everyday life...if you are poor or struggling to keep up financially...you're considered unworthy.

It's the great American dream in action...isn't it?

Really....?....?.

This is something new somehow?. I was a poor kid and dealt with this stuff many, many years ago !.

The world isn't all brand new and all just because you have never been exposed to it in your short time here.

This reply is not aimed at anyone personally by the way, it just amazes me how sheltered people actually are in their self made cages and enclosures that this would seem like something new, different or ridiculously unfair.

This is nothing new.

The world will continue to suck until more people come away from their sheltered little safe zones and address the inequities of it.

T'ain't never gonna happen....

a reply to: The Vagabond

Yes I think I would have to agree. The current system is geared toward how much money can I make. When my son started high school I didn't like how it was set up so I put him in a charter school. He got a much better education than public school would have given him.