Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

After I posted earlier today, a parent of one of my daughter's classmates was saying all but 2 of the public elementary schools in Pflugerville, Texas have basically collapsed and aren't worth sending your kids to. According to her, school after school has collapsed in that district over the past 10 years. Then she went on to say that in one school, there is a child who has hour long tantrums and everyone is told to stand back and do nothing until the tantrum plays out. So twenty some kids are basically on standby doing nothing for an hour. They are told that every child has a right to learn as the reason for allowing this. She said, therefore, for her it is either the private school our kids are going to or home schooling. Public school is now out of the question for her family. We then carried on with a discussion of how we have to pay for this nonsense, the amount of money public schools waste and how high our taxes are.

In an accelerating collapse, there are some silver linings. Also during that conversation, we talked about how truly excellent the school is that we send our kids to. Many of the teachers there are what I call "public school refugees" who are experienced teachers and administrators who have left the public schools in disgust so they can now do what they are called to do, albeit for less money. We traded stories about how the teachers there discipline to a higher standard than what we as parents expect. Therefore, we know that things are in good hands and we don't have to babysit situations we hear about from our kids. Of course, as those highly competent teachers and administrators flee the public schools, the collapse of the public schools accelerates.

This afternoon I checked this information with a parent who was an elementary school teacher. She verified that this is common now in the public schools and that she was aware that this occurs in this district exactly as it was described to me earlier this week. I told her I wanted to be sure because I could hardly believe it.

All I knew from her previously was that she is no longer teaching but had applied to be a substitute teacher at our daughter's school (both of our daughters are in kindergarten there). She said the wait list is long and she doubted she would get in for some time, if at all.

Today she told me that in the elementary school in a different district she had taught in there was something called a special behavioral unit comprised of a number of kids who had behavioral problems. She said the kids in this unit were spread out among all the classrooms in her elementary school, so every teacher had to deal with some of them. She said that one of the kids in particular would have tantrums, overturning shelves, throwing chairs, etc., and she would have to call in a trained person who was the only person allowed to touch these kids. This specially trained person would give the kid a bear hug and go about calming him down, then return him to the classroom. She said the whole situation is ridiculous and she is sending her daughter to this private school because she doesn't want her being traumatized watching this.