Recently there was a news article which attempted to lay blame for NV education crisis on the feets of parents. As a concerned parent with two kids in the Clark County School District I was angered at the thought. But as I read I have to tell you some question came to mind. The article titled "Parents share blame for education woes". The authored asked many question which I feel we need to asking ourselves and those around us. How many parent are actually involved in our children's education? How many of us knows the names of our children's teacher? How many of us attend open houses? How many of us attend PTA meetings and actively participate? How many of us ensure the TV, video games, and radios are off and homework is done? Recently I was speaking to a parent and she was complaining about her kids having to take the proficiency exam. She explained that she didn't feel it was fair that her kids had to take a test on math that they didn't learn in school. That is the attitude of many parents and yet we have to ask why is there such low expectations for our students. Why is the test so hard for so many of our students and yet others are able to pass. Our students are not being prepared at home and sometimes in the schools. The fact that some are passing is an indication that some students are being taught what is on the test. Many parents are not ensuring that there students are taking math beyond algebra in school. So when it comes time to take the test the student is lost. I explained to that parent that if she knew the test contained algebra then it was her responsibility to ensure that her student was receiving help in algebra. She should have been monitoring her grades and when the student began to struggle she should have gotten her tutoring. The school district provides tutoring help for students and yet many parents don't utilize it. Many of our teachers are in the classrooms before school and stay late after school to tutor our kids. I get angry when I hear people complain about our teachers. They do a great job with limited resources and little thanks. They receive little if any support from many parents. The failures of our schools does to a degree lay on our feet and until we all step up and help our schools they are going to continue to fail.
Everyday our schools are struggling with limited resources. On Feb 8th I'm launching a Adopt a Teacher program to start helping to ensure that our teachers have the resources they need to be effective in the classroom. Join me by donating gift cards to be distributed to area teachers to ensure that our classrooms have what they need. If interested contact me at mspatrina@yahoo.com. It's time for our communities to get involved and stop complaining about our schools. It's time to go into our schools and make them better. I want to challenge anyone reading this to join a PTA. Any PTA for any school they can all use more help. Take time to go into the classroom and help. They can all use volunteers. Any investment in education whether by time or money is never wasted. This is the future of our state we are talking about!
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