My Letter to the Editor
Published in the San Jose Mercury News: September 20, 2008
Editor:
According to Sen. Tom Harkin in Washington, the civil rights legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed for the disabled in 1990, "led to a supreme absurdity, a 'Catch-22' situation. The more successful a person was at coping with a disability, the more likely it was the court would find that the disabled person was no longer disabled and therefore no longer covered under the ADA." Surely this has been the position of the emotionally disabled for almost 20 years. Now a new law, passed in Congress this week, corrects a generation of injustice, broadening and enlarging the scope of the original law, and redefining the purpose of protecting the disabled.
Tim K. Fitzgerald
Former vice chair San Jose Disability Advisory Commission San Jose
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
My Goals as School Board Member
First off, I will look at goals the Public School System should always strive to achieve, then I will look at objectives for the next term, and then how they may be achieved. This may not be popular in some quarters. The teachers have a strong Union, but in my informed mind, they have become part of the problem, not as Harry Edwards suggested in the 60's part of the solution.
Bearing in mind what John Dewey said over 100 years ago,"All life educates and formal education is only a small part of the education of the individual" a school, as a social institution, should preserve the nations culture, and be a breeding ground for new ideas. This is first off an 'open society' and those values must be preserved from one generation to the next by our schools and our family institutions. Schools must enlighten and demystify posterity. To that end, all enrolled students must have a functional use of the English language by the time they enter high school. That represents a "rite of passage."
The first goal, and it should be unanimous, is improve the quality of formal education in the entire district with better 'Exiting Scores' set by the board.
Next studies should reflect an increasing percentage of graduating seniors entering post secondary education for life skills and career opportunities.
The goal of all education public and private must be to raise social commitment of the community to the principle of education in and of itself.
1) The first objective to reach these goals would, in my opinion, be to lower school drop out rate by 5 to 10 percentage point during my four year term.
2) For a long time I have felt we must require all teachers in the district to embark on a self improvement program entailing study in advanced graduate formal education beginning as soon as possible.
3)We must initiate an optional Montesorri system of education in the primary grades at magnet schools.
4) Initiate at Board level action to join with the City of San Jose in after school co-rec programs in City parks and libraries.
Just off the 'top of my head' I think this is a reasonable place to start. Perhaps not in keeping so much with being the 'absent parent' as I have heard so much about, but if we are not to destroy the hopes of public education and its limitations, I think we must re-consider the parenting problem, and apply pressure where it is most needed and place responsibility for rearing children squarely on the shoulders - first off - in the home.
Bearing in mind what John Dewey said over 100 years ago,"All life educates and formal education is only a small part of the education of the individual" a school, as a social institution, should preserve the nations culture, and be a breeding ground for new ideas. This is first off an 'open society' and those values must be preserved from one generation to the next by our schools and our family institutions. Schools must enlighten and demystify posterity. To that end, all enrolled students must have a functional use of the English language by the time they enter high school. That represents a "rite of passage."
The first goal, and it should be unanimous, is improve the quality of formal education in the entire district with better 'Exiting Scores' set by the board.
Next studies should reflect an increasing percentage of graduating seniors entering post secondary education for life skills and career opportunities.
The goal of all education public and private must be to raise social commitment of the community to the principle of education in and of itself.
1) The first objective to reach these goals would, in my opinion, be to lower school drop out rate by 5 to 10 percentage point during my four year term.
2) For a long time I have felt we must require all teachers in the district to embark on a self improvement program entailing study in advanced graduate formal education beginning as soon as possible.
3)We must initiate an optional Montesorri system of education in the primary grades at magnet schools.
4) Initiate at Board level action to join with the City of San Jose in after school co-rec programs in City parks and libraries.
Just off the 'top of my head' I think this is a reasonable place to start. Perhaps not in keeping so much with being the 'absent parent' as I have heard so much about, but if we are not to destroy the hopes of public education and its limitations, I think we must re-consider the parenting problem, and apply pressure where it is most needed and place responsibility for rearing children squarely on the shoulders - first off - in the home.
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