What Do Schools Need? Janitors and School Buses Before iPads, Say Parents
If you had a room full of parents of public school students and asked them how their district should be using state education funds and what individual schools need, what would they say?
For Benita Ayala, whose two sons attend public schools in Sacramento, the answer is “simple things” – like more janitorial staff and a school library that’s open every day.
Ayala says she sees a lack of basic services at both of her sons’ schools. She gives an example of one day recently when her son Christopher had to use the restroom, but the door was locked even though the bathroom wasn’t occupied, and a janitor couldn’t be found to open it; her son finally urinated on himself. At her other son’s school, the library is only open certain days of the week, and her son can’t always access the materials he needs.
She’s also concerned about the current focus on technology-based curriculums, especially in Christopher’s case. Christopher has special needs and his class includes children who are deaf and non-verbal, and she points out that the existing technology in the classroom is antiquated.
“How are they going to access that [kind of] curriculum?” she says. “We need to allocate funds more in developing educators that can relate better to different kinds of special needs.”
At a community forum in Sacramento last week organized by The California Endowment, a health