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Keeping our kids in school for ten hours is the solution to all that expensive childcare says Kamala Harris!
“Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) introduced legislation Wednesday that would keep public elementary schools open for 10 hours a day, a move that would more closely align with the workday.
TEN HOURS at school. WOW. It’s quite the idiotically ambitious program.
“Five-year grants of up to $5 million would go to school districts serving a high number of low-income families to push the end of the average school day from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in 500 schools. School days typically start at 8 a.m. Teachers and faculty, the bill says, would not have to work additional hours unless they sign up for an extra shift, for which they would be compensated at the rate they get during normal school hours.
The bill proposes that the grant money go to extracurricular activities like electives in “music, arts, athletics, writing and engineering,” Harris’ senate office told CNBC. The extra time can also go toward dance and theater programs, among other enrichment activities, the office said. but it leaves the scheduling of the day open to school administrators.”
Oh, so the OTHER people the district hires will manage the kids until the parents come pick them up by 6pm or they get bused home. Got it.
Riddle me this Kamala. Where will the $5 million in grants come from? TAXES. Our taxes.
Where will the money come from to cover the additional insurance costs incurred by the school districts to run these programs? Yep, you guessed it. MOAR TAXES!!
How many people will it take to staff these programs? No one has any idea. Why? Because this bill, and yes, it is an actual bill, is an “innovation bill.” It is a bill without solutions because the local communities/parents/schools will be the ones figuring out how to make this work.
Oh wait! It also stipulates that funding must be found via private philanthropy or state grants in order to keep the program going after the five year mark hits. Not only that, but in-kind donations can ALSO include teachers donating their time.
This from the same woman who advocated for teacher pay raises as part of her Presidential campaign.
Super cool idea! Pay our teachers more and THEN put pressure on them to stay longer, on their own dime and time, to pay for this idiocy?
Here’s another problem with this grandiose farting unicorn plan. The kids will be sitting too much of the time. As this educator noted, the amount of sitting and not talking that high school kids do is actually hurting their education and their critical thinking abilities.
Imagine what it will be like for active elementary and middle school kids to end up spending TEN HOURS in the same building?
Then, they’ll get home at 6:30 or so, dinner after that and then bed. Family time? What family time?
This innovation idea that Kamala is pushing to become actual LAW? NO.
Honestly this sounds cruel to kids & just serves to aligns their lives around the corporate clock. How about better free after school programs and childcare benefits as well as better working conditions rather than forcing young people to be in school for such long hours?
— Jacqueline M Klopp (@jmklopp1) November 6, 2019
Ahhh…there’s that FREE word again. None of this will be free. NONE OF IT.
Did you read what the program entails? It would allow children to participate in extra curricular activities without the parents having to pay extra. I.E. if your child is into athletics they partner with the local little league etc.
— satay31 Sir this a Wendys! (@satay31) November 6, 2019
Sure, the parents won’t pay extra THEN. The payment will come due during tax time.
What astounds me is that at least one teacher’s union, American Federation of Teachers, is all for this, even though it is obvious that teachers will be the ones to deal with this additional burden. Yet there are before and after care programs in place across the country. Instead of proposing new legislation, how about studying the programs in place and figuring out what does and doesn’t work?
Instead we have people telling us we aren’t understanding Kamala’s brilliance regarding this legislation.
We didn't misinterpret anything. She wants to take an under-funded and under-appreciated segment of our public servants and put even more responsibility on their shoulders.
If a kid sleeps 8 hours and is at a government facility for 10, when do they see family/have downtime?
— online nobody (@online_nobody) November 6, 2019
Exactly! Again, the proponents of the bill, including Senator Michael Bennett (D-CO) who ran Denver Public Schools into the ground, don’t have a solution, it’s innovation time!
Sounds like Kamala bought into Melissa Harris-Perry’s kids belong to the collective bit from 2013:
“”We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities” Melissa Harris-Perry 2013″
Our kids shouldn’t be used as a social and legislative experiment, but that is what will happen if this piece of crap legislation becomes law.
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Joe in PNG says: Thank God I’m an adult now. Being an Odd Kid, I hated and despised the Horrible Conformity Factory and Institute for Applied Bullying that was public education.
Getting home so I could have a few hours of relief by running around outside was one of few things that kept me together during those horrible days. The idea of spending all my daylight hours inside that terrible institution- shudder.
Jim says: Also being an ”Odd Kid” I survived school and the constant daily bullying and couldn’t wait to get home where I would retreat [as autistics tend to do] to my pigeon loft up the back of our big garden where I would sit with my pigeons re-charging for hours at a time. (The side benefit was that all those hours watching the behaviour of my pigeons and then training their behaviour led to me working out for myself [though I didn’t know it at the time] the fundamental mechanisms of operant and classical conditioning.) Extending the school day would have exposed me to more general stress and more bullying.
Oscar says: The unions like this because they know they will use it as leverage for higher pay and benefits.
It’s all for the kids of course.
George V says: Why not 24 hour/day schools? After all, who better than our federal government to ensure your child gets an enriching education as well as good experiences to make them ready for life as productive members of the state, and also establishes good nutrition and sleep habits?
Parental visiting will be allowed, but of course it is based on the parent’s social behavior scores.
Randy Wolf says: As I have posted many times on these sites, Harris is just not very bright. A very shallow thinker and that is probably giving her too much credit.
A President has no impact on the length of school days. Look what happened when Michelle tried to dictate the lunch programs. Utter failure. Harris should run for the school board in her town. Most school board members I know are smarter than she is so it could be a tough race but if this is her big issue…a Presidential race is no place for her.
GWB says: how about studying the programs in place and figuring out what does and doesn’t work?
Well, that’s part of the problem: not being able to see what the problem is.
The real difficulty here is that a huge chunk of our society’s families are two-income households or single parent households. Some of that is societal failure of the family. Some of it is our society setting too high of expectations for income and wealth. (Honestly, a lot of two-income households could succeed quite handily on one – with a resetting of their expectations.) What this ultimately means for the children is that they aren’t raised by the parent(s) but by a paid provider.
It’s a real problem, and one that’s exploited by the progressives in their quest to mold their ‘perfect society’. The only way to protect your children is to raise them yourself. Homeschool, if you can (and you likely can – the heart of homeschooling is creativity and personalization). Have someone at home to make dinner, clean house, listen to the kids after school, be part of the neighborhood. Being a family is more than just being related by blood/marriage/adoption and living in the same building.
Be radical. Be at home. Be a family.
(I know there are people who simply cannot. Let’s all the rest of us help them out with these things so they can. But not gov’t – they suck at it, and will inevitably turn your kids into mindless drones or apparatchiks.)
njc says: Studying what works is a crime to the Left. Everyone knows their program can’t work so long as there is a single person, a single thought, not swallowed up and spat out as the New Soviet Man.
Gret says: Kids do a 50 hour week?
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