Southwest High School Problems are Avoidable and Embarassing

Southwest High School in Kansas City is a joke. On Friday, the Fire Department was called to the School on two separate occasions, and Police later called for a fight. The School, known as The Southwest Early College Campus, has been making some strides in recent years, but this year has been a shambles. The Kansas City Fire Department has been called to the school more than 50 TIMES since August! That's like once every 2 and half days. How can that be any kind of a learning environment.

Being an "Early College Campus" you might think the kids would be the best and brightest of the school district. If that's the case, the city is fucked for the future. Security has been doubled, some of the worst offenders were sent to a new alternative High School, and still the problems persist. If you live in the KCMO School District and you don't send your kids to private school, you are ABUSING them - plain and simple. Get out now if you can't afford private schools.

Every student and parent should be made to sign a document stating the rules for civilized behavior. This kind of bullshit is not tolerated anywhere else, why should it be tolerated in Kansas City schools?  If the rules cannot be followed, then the students should be expelled, plain and simple. The students causing the problems obviously don't want to be there anyway, and at least you can try to teach the ones that are left. The only problem with this plan is that the district is paid per student, and after weeding out the undesirables, you would have very few students left, and that might hurt the bottom line.

Southwest High School Divided into Three Parts

Southwest High School to Divide into Three Separate Parts by Friday
by Kansas City News

Just as predicted, Kansas City's infamous "Right Size" plan has backfired.  In March 2010, The Kansas City Board of Education voted to close almost half of the city’s public schools, attempting to cut down on a $50 million deficit.  Nearly 300 Kansas City teachers lost their jobs, and several major schools were closed abruptly.  A local school, Southwest High School, has suffered immensely since this plan was put into action.  When the right-size plan went into action, Westport High School, located at 315 39th Street (in the deep ghetto) was closed and it's students were crammed in with the students at Southwest High School, located at 6512 Wornall (not so much in the ghetto, more like in the middle of Waldo).  This "blending" of students from the deep hood with students from the Waldo area caused a record-setting trend of violence.  Southwest High, becoming extremely overcrowded, crammed students into closed quarters with catastrophic results.  Police were called to the school 50 times in the first 36 days that the school was open!  Police officers were assaulted and injured, and the school was even set on fire at one point.

Miundrae Prince, Kansas City's Chief Acedemic Officer, and quite possibly former rapper, announced that Southwest High School would be divided into 3 sections to try to combat the discipline problems the school faces:

1.  Early College - not really sure what this means, but we're assuming that the school is hoping to rope all of the decent students into this section.

2.  Life and Engineering Sciences - or "manual tech" - This section probably resembles the classic vocational tech program that Kansas City schools have had for years which separated those who did not want to learn typical school subjects from the general population.  These students were often bussed away to learn how to work on cars, etc.  Or as Forest Gump's mother says "My boy isn't going to some special school to learn how to retread tires".  I remember the kids who attended the vocational program at our school, let's just say that none of them turned out to be white collar business professionals.

3.  Children as Individuals - This one makes absolutely no sense from the name alone, but district representatives (and former rappers) say that it is for students who want to study the "standards based education".  I'm guessing that this is the middle ground.

Students at Southwest High are given the choice of which program they wish to enroll in and they must decide by this Friday.  Three mothers of students were interviewed and they had mixed feelings - "Jovonda" said that she thought that it was a good idea, "Caseyona" said that she hoped that it would work, and lastly, "Lawanda" said that she did not think that it would solve anything at Southwest.  If the students are allowed to choose whatever section of the school that they want to attend, there will surely be a serious imbalance, as high school students mostly follow whatever their friends, girlfriends / boyfriends are doing.