Debating Best Waysto Keep Pupils on Track
Re “After-School No-Brainer” editorial, Sept. 23:
The conclusion was drawn from a survey that the hour after the school bell rings is the time when juvenile crime soars, and also when children are more likely to be victims of crime.
The recommendation of your editorial and the report is to provide more after-school programs. Here’s a better solution: Provide a longer school day. This will resolve the problem of unsupervised children hanging out without constructive activities and also the dilemma teachers face every day of how to fit all the required disciplines into too few school hours. With a longer school day, children would have time for art, music, drama, physical education, hands on science and social-studies projects as well as fundamental learning in language and math.
Instead of asking taxpayers to fund additional after-school programs with various providers, a longer school day should be mandated by our Legislature.
Diane Baker
Corona Del Mar
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Your editorial was aptly titled. It is, in fact, a No-Brainer. We at the Boys & Girls Club of Wilmington get no funding for this purpose, even though what we do is exactly what this article clearly describes as the no-brain solution.
With a nearly $9-billion budget, Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t have the resources to devote to this problem. The public and the government seem to look to the schools to be all things to all people, and the reality is that the academic standing of California is in the 54th percentile nationally and Wilmington is in the 20s.
On an ordinary day, we simply want the working poor to have a place for their kids to go during that critical time. A normal child without supervision on a daily basis will eventually find trouble.
We hear a great deal of lip service focused at “our children,” yet the juvenile correction facilities are full, and the juvenile probation officers’ caseloads are bigger and bigger. Counseling (job, social or psychotherapeutic) is unavailable, and funding for such programs is close to impossible to secure.
When is our society going to put our priorities where our rhetoric is? If we cannot implement a no-brain solution that is staring us in the face, what does that say about us?
Dan Williams
Boys & Girls Club of Wilmington
Los Angeles
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Yes, kids can make trouble after school. Your editorial reported new statistics that show how bad the trouble can get. It also described research showing that after-school programs can be a big help. It quoted a researcher as saying that such a program keeps children safe and out of trouble, provides them with a place where they will not have to spend hours alone, and improves their schoolwork. And yes, there are encouraging instances of cities and schools collaborating on after-school programs. You noted that Costa Mesa and the Newport Mesa Unified School District recently resolved to increase joint efforts to provide more after-school programming.
Though the editorial helpfully brought to light several joint efforts underway, it failed to point out the dark side of such efforts. This is the potential for governments to go too far and start teaming with religious organizations. The city of Costa Mesa, unfortunately, appears to be headed in that direction.
Costa Mesa has a well-deserved reputation for stretching taxpayer dollars for maximum benefit. However, its recent resolution to collaborate, not only with schools but with unspecified “community non-profit partners,” threatens to violate the arm’s-length relationship of church and state. In perhaps an effort to get more bang for its buck, the city runs a very grave risk.
Where there is no religion involved, then it is, indeed, a no-
brainer for cities, schools and nonprofits to collaborate on after-school activities for children. We need to become critical, though, when governments propose to open their arms and their purses to religious groups.
Tom Egan
Costa Mesa
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My three questions or thoughts to the parents in Orange County and throughout California are:
Are you satisfied with the education your children are receiving in the public school system?
If anything happened to you, would your child as an adult be able to hold a job to support his or her family and you on the education they are receiving in the public school system today?
Do you know what your child’s reading grade level at the end of each year?
Many parents have been surprised to find out their sons or daughters are reading two to three grade levels below their classmates.
Kimberly Brandt
Orange
