Showing posts with label westport high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label westport high school. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

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.

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