Ask kids why they want to quit school

The dropout rate for West Virginia and Raleigh County is inexcusable. Educators have for much too long been allowed to encourage quitting when it gets hard. I was told by my son’s teachers they didn’t get paid enough to do anything beyond the easy tasks like giving assignments or lectures.

Since Dwight Dials left, our county education system has gone so far downhill we will never climb back to the days when WWHS was one of the top schools in the state.

Introducing more laws like the one to force students to go to school until 17 years old instead of 16 years old is only a Band-Aid on a wound that is gushing blood.

The damage to my children alone in this county is irreparable; they will never get those years back. If we really want to find the reason kids are quitting, ask them. I know at least a dozen kids right now that are unable to find work or be involved in our community due to the lack of education in this county.

I would like to see some accountability in the Board of Education and our staff in all our schools. If nothing else, it would show the taxpayers that it is important to do the job the administrators and teachers are hired to do.



Elizabeth Bland

Beckley

As the family goes, so goes the nation

As we are all aware, Fayette County schools are currently struggling. It is a problem we all need to be invested in, as these kids are our future. With this in mind, why are legislators now in the process of trying to implement law that will spend millions of taxpayer dollars to increase the compulsory attendance age to 17, and even more dismaying, discussing following the lead of a Nicholas County judge in taking truants out of their homes and placing them in foster care until the age of 18?

We are told there aren’t enough foster care homes for the kids that are in the system now. What price will we pay, both in money spent to enforce this law, trying to come up with more foster care families (or worse yet, group homes), and the price paid in more trauma to individuals and families that possibly could have been helped if a different approach had been taken?

Also, pity the poor teachers who get to deal with classrooms of 17-year-olds who are there only because they have been forced to be there. These are complex problems, and they will not be solved in a simple way. Certainly, a better approach is to begin the process to strengthen and empower families, and to intervene in a different way long before the teen years. 

As a former teacher, career social worker and counselor with teens involved in the court system, I have worked extensively with those involved in the foster care system. I would add that my husband and I have been foster parents and have adopted a teen from the foster care system. Please do not misunderstand: Although there are wonderful foster families out there, do not have any illusions that it is a good place for kids except as a last resort. There is truth in the old saying “as the family goes, so goes the nation.”

An immediate direction needs to be to shore up or create serious vocational training for teens who cannot or do not want to participate in the college preparatory tracks. Give students incentive to want to be in school because they know they can leave with the ability to begin a vocation or begin college. Learn from successful charter schools and keep our schools small enough so students are not anonymous members of huge groups, and can form relationships with teachers and or counselors who are not so overwhelmed with  large numbers students (and discipline problems).  If there is a place to be heavy-handed, it is dealing with discipline problems in the classroom. At the same time, implement intensive elementary school reading and learning disability intervention for those students identified as at risk.



 Nancy Carlson

 Fayetteville