EDUCATION POLITICS-We’re all going for ipads here in LAUSD and who’s to say the technology gap isn’t in fact a hallmark of social injustice? Putting an ipad in the hands of every kindergartener would seem to me to be a bit of window dressing for deeper, more serious issues of social inequality but it’s hard to know where to start in a circle of discontent and deprivation.
One place is to look at what isn’t getting done while implementing ipads instead. A facebook page has started to document issues of repair and maintenance in our schools, unaddressed. And a picture is worth a thousand words.
More times than I can count I have heard people intimate that at the end of the day, they just do not believe things are as physically decrepit as all that. Always there is this sidelong implication that there is so much graft among public employees that really, it’s OK to decimate support staff for teachers … and our children. Maybe they kinda sorta had it coming? Or something??
Lost in all this is, as always, the civil rights of our children. In a democracy every child deserves access to the same, excellent, well-supported education.
When physical conditions are decrepit, play equipment is dangerous and conditions of crowding and under-staffing are so severe, no one is going to be learning abstractions beyond this one: that these children do not matter to society.
When we choose to divert $1B of maintenance and construction money to technology instead of to making our schools safer, we are sending a powerful message about priorities.
When we disregard the oversight of our citizens’ committee safeguarded with tax monies intended for maintenance and construction, we send a powerful message about priorities.
We can claim all we like that social justice is at the root of working to bust the technology gap, but when kids’ bodies are in danger of being busted first, it’s hard to believe the truth of any of this.
Fix Our Schools! Fund Our Schools!
Bring Back Arts Teachers And Librarians And Counselors.
And Patch Up All That Gross Plumbing Please.
(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 11
Pub: Feb 7, 2014
