Schools Out!

Most parents cringe at the idea of the kids home for the summer.  Petersburg parents likely are thankful...I know I am.  My son had some maturity issues and definitely some behavior issues that seemed to throw his teacher and entire support staff for a loop.  Despite suspensions, meetings, and trying many, many different things, no one had the answer and his grades slipped.  You know, I never once met our "guidance councilor".  What a joke.  After much thought, we are moving.  There are too many issues here...none of which the City, residents, School Board, or School Staff are capable or willing to even attempt to fix.  For my son's sake, it is time to move to a place where the schools are properly managed and cared for.

A Year Full of Disappointment

Words, alone, can not describe how thoroughly disappointed I am with Petersburg City Public Schools, as both a parent of a child who had the unfortunate luck to be a student in one of their pathetic schools and as a lifetime resident and tax-paying citizen of this community.

In this school year I have witnessed at Walnut Hill Elementary School:

• Disregard for proper discipline techniques.
• Inadequate support, both in staff/personnel and especially guidance. 
• Parents, so burned out by years of inadequate education practices that they refuse to care anymore.
• Teachers with great intentions but out-of-date teaching techniques.
• A complete lack of proper discipline techniques.
• Suspension is the only form of discipline outside of the classroom.
• School administrators that use excuses instead of doing what is right.
• School Board and City Officials who put more energy into "Hope and Prayer" than "Actions and Solutions".
• A clueless administration, from Superintendent down...with no answers, no plan, or no experience in turning around a school in Petersburg's position.

To give credit where credit is due, there were some grounds improvements done.  With that said, the grounds issue were simple fixes...I have seen no efforts to correct the more complicated issues that haunt our schools.

Whether you have children or not, if you are member of this community, you should be just as upset.  Americans rally everyday to feed the hungry far away, while all the time children right here in our home town are starving for a quality education. Our tax dollars are being squandered...and we spend more per child then most school systems.  We can not let them take our money for trash schools anymore.

If you think for a minute our school board or school system has a "plan" or that "year-round schooling" in 2 schools will be the "fix-all" we all hope for, keep on hoping...in the mean time, I am moving somewhere with better school...and God help the poor children who are forced to continue being abused by Petersburg City Public Schools.  We all have to remember, the children are who are really suffering the most here...and there is just no excuses for that, especially in America.

"We must all suffer one of two things:  the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappoinment."  Jim Rohn