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I don't believe so. I know when my mom taught in Jefferson County (she retired in 2009) they did not and I would doubt HSV, Madison County, or Madison city practices corporal punishment these days.
Yes, I'm almost certain it has been banned here, but it wasn't too long ago that it was allowed.
I remember in junior high school, the Industrial Arts teacher had the collateral duty of paddling. He had what was basically a 1 x 6, with a shaped handle, and the business part had numerous holed drilled in it. Allegedly that inflicted more pain. What was done then was no doubt going too far, but it was effective. BTW ... the
The Paddle was onlly used on boys ... not sure what punishment girls were dealt, but honestly I don't remember any of them misbehaving. Fortunately, I never felt the wrath of the Paddle.
Discipline problems nowadays are of a totally different nature. Back then, teachers were respected and obeyed, and punishment when the student got home could have been even worse once the parents found out.
A lot of this is some of the parents fault. You know the ones, they come into the school raising hell every time their little "angel" gets in trouble. It is always someone else's fault and little Johnny "got blamed for it." They don't realize the little moron is a menace to society yet. They don't figure that out until he is in his early 20's and starts getting arrested and then they find out he is a drug addict.
As the child of a retired teacher of 38 years I can say this is dead on. My mom always said a lot of the student's behavior was a reflection of the "do no wrong" attitude of their parents. My mom taught at a rather affluent school (at that time) and it was not uncommon to have parent storm into the school with their attorney threatening lawsuits over their child being disciplined for justifiable offenses.
Its one reason she retired when she did. She easily could have kept teaching, but it was not worth it and she saw where the schools were heading.
So I recently got an email from Huntsville City Schools concerning the Desegregation Order.
The email was an eye-opener. So much of the HCS staff has quit or retired in the last year. You have to wonder what is going on.
The email also bemoans the "misconceptions" that people have of the new "Behavioral Guidelines", with people feeling like they are no longer punishing kids.
My daughter goes to the Academy for Gifted and Talented at Williams. Williams feeds to Columbia, though I think AGT kids can also go to the New Century Technology HS if they want. You bet your bippy I want.
If I'm reading this data right, the discipline problem rate at Columbia is staggering. 52% of the black population and 38% of the white population and 39% of the other population has had a discipline referral:
New Century is drastically less:
30% of the black population and 15% of the white population and 20% of the other population of Columbia has received an in-school suspension.
New Century is 2% across the board.
For out-of-school suspensions, Columbia had 13% of the black population suspended, 4% of the white population, and 5% of the other population.
New Century is 1% across the board.
To me, this is mind-blowing. I wonder if they will continue to publish this kind of data once the Desegregation Order stuff is over?
I am very concerned about the state of public schools. So many kids have parents that are failing their basic duties of parenting that the school system is having to try and function as parents. Can't feed your kids? Free food at school. Can't take care of them after school? School will provide daycare. Can't teach your kids how to behave? The school will now teach your kids how to behave.
From the email:
"The District’s Behavioral Learning initiatives are considerably different from the District’s pre-Consent Order discipline policies in some critical ways. Namely, the new policies focus more on helping students change their behaviors rather than on removal from the school environment, which is a change not only for the schools but also the community."
I get what they are trying to do. If you let these kids fall through the cracks, and just kick them out when they misbehave, then ultimately they become burdens on society and result in increased taxpayer costs for law enforcement and imprisonment.
But I firmly believe that this is lowering the quality of the academic environment for everyone else. Teachers and staff are now going to have to devote time and resources to doing what parents should be doing - teaching children how to behave. And they will have to try and figure out how to do this without any real punishment at their disposal to use.
And for all of the children in school that come from parents who teach them to respect authority, value an education, and value academic achievement, they are now going to have kids in their midst who do none of those things. This kind of behavior rubs off on the good kids.
I'm very fortunate right now that my oldest is going to AGT, which is essentially a private school segregated in the heart of Williams Middle. They have their own wing of the school, their own classes, their own PEs, and their own lunch. It is astonishing to me that they were able to achieve this, and I hope my youngest gets the opportunity to follow through it (he is in gifted at Providence Elementary). But it is fantastic - my daughter is surrounded by like-minded children with like-minded parents and the competition to achieve fosters a high level of academic expectation in the children. When everyone around you is trying to succeed, it drives you to try and succeed also.
When you are surrounded by kids who don't want to succeed, I'm pretty sure that has the opposite effect on you.
If my kids have to be in general population at Columbia, I'm pretty sure we will vote with our feet and try the new Connections Academy home school charter program.
What has been stated in this post is not all true. Williams AGT students are not isolated from the other Williams students. They are in general population for PE, lunch, and some music. Also they travel through the same halls and in some cases are taught by the same teachers. They have clubs and extra curriculars with the general population. Yes, they have a wing but it is not closed off. AGT is absolutely not a “private School.”
As far as the DAC is concerned, I am interested in why they have not addressed the fact that AGT is not held to the same standards that all other HCS students are, especially the BLG. Yes, they have behavioral issues like any other middle schooler but they do not get disclipline referrals or discipline.
In order to understand the challenges that Columbia High School faces, you have to look at the original reason for building Columbia in the first place and that was that the existing Butler High School did not have a great academic reputation and it was the High School for which Redstone Arsenal was zoned and this fact was seen as an impediment to efforts to recruit more military jobs at Redstone - The high ranking officers didn't want their kids going to Butler. To address this challenge, the City of Huntsville created the Columbia district out of the western portions of the existing Butler district. On paper, this looked pretty good as it included some pretty nice neighborhoods of single family homes which included Sherwood Park and the Huntsville portion of Edgewater. Yet, it also included a sizeable number of apartments and the neighborhoods of single family homes were older with a lot of empty nesters and a small number of school aged kids.
At the same time, the discussion about building Columbia was going on, the developers of Providence suggested that if new schools could be built in the western portion of Huntsville, up to 5,000 new homes could be built (Keep in mind, there hadn't been any new construction in this western area in over ten years). Mayor Loretta Spencer agreed with their argument and Columbia was built as well as the Providence K-8 School.
The challenge then came that the existing desegregation lawsuit (from 1971) prevented Huntsville City Schools from creating a majority white school adjacent to an existing majority black school - Providence Elementary was created out of the existing Highlands Elementary School district which was probably 95%+black. Therefore, HCS had to draw the district lines further east to insure that Providence Elementary wouldn't be too demographically different from Highlands. As a result, the children from single family homes were a small minority of the student body and the school had a student body of kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (mostly from apartments)than what one would think given the physical location of the Providence School. There was a hope that a boom in construction of single family homes in not only the Village of Providence, but the numerous subdivisions in the Huntsville annexed portions of Monrovia would lead to more of a mix of socioeconomic backgrounds in the School, but that hasn't happened. In fact, the Federal Judge asked for the numbers of students in each public school district in the City who attend private school and the Providence Elementary district had the highest number with 400 kids who attend private.
The reason the situation at Providence is relevant is that there are two elementary schools who feed students who feed their students to Columbia High and Williams Elementary off of Zeirdt Rd. is the other one. Williams has significant problems which have been discussed on this forum before.
In conclusion, the challenge which faced the City of Huntsville when Butler was the High School for the western portions of the City have remained, they have essentially moved to a new building located in Research Park called Columbia High School. Ironically, the construction of both Providence Elementary and Columbia High have had the desired effect as they have led to an enormous construction boom in both residential and commercial development of probably well over a billion dollars when you take into account that The Village of Providence, Lake Forest, The Reserve, and the numerous other neighborhoods along Zeirdt Rd. as well as Midtown on the Park and a large number of neighborhoods in the Huntsville areas of Monrovia are all in the Columbia High School district. Yet, despite all of these new single family homes in the district, there are at least 400 kids zoned for Providence who attend private schools - It would be interesting to see if that school would have a better academic ranking if those kids were students there and subsequently if Columbia would, too.
The desegregation order hurts Huntsville more than it helps. In large cities without such orders, most public schools pretty much follow the socio-economic circumstances of the district. This in many cases leads to predominantly black or white Schools or predominantly rich or poor schools.
In the case of Huntsville, it's just to easy to move to Madison, the county, or just private school. The desegregation order solves nothing and creates headaches.
Eventually Huntsville will stop growing when people will stop buying in West Huntsville in West Madison county/ east limestone county.
The question I have is, why should discipline on other students affect your kids?
As the old adage, goes, bad apples spoil the bunch.
Attitudes are contagious. When you are surrounded by people who behave a certain way, it can influence you to also behave that way. This works both ways. When you are surrounded by people who don't value discipline, value education, and respect authority, it pulls your behavior in that direction, but when you are surrounded by people who do value discipline, do value education, and do respect authority, it pulls your behavior in that direction. To me, this is the biggest problem.
But there is also the problem that now the teachers are having to spend more time dealing with problem kids, and that means less time devoted to education for the non-problem kids.
While you may be able to isolate yourself somewhat if you are able to get into honors or AP classes, what if you can't get into those classes?
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What has been stated in this post is not all true. Williams AGT students are not isolated from the other Williams students. They are in general population for PE, lunch, and some music. Also they travel through the same halls and in some cases are taught by the same teachers. They have clubs and extra curriculars with the general population. Yes, they have a wing but it is not closed off. AGT is absolutely not a “private School.”
It is like a private school. My daughter attends AGT. I went to the open house. They do have their own wing of the school - I saw it. They are isolated from the rest of the students for most, if not all, of the day. I will have to re-confirm with my daughter, but I'm pretty sure they eat lunch by themselves. Her Piano class is only AGT kids. I'll have to re-check on PE but my understanding was starting this year they were also separated.
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As far as the DAC is concerned, I am interested in why they have not addressed the fact that AGT is not held to the same standards that all other HCS students are, especially the BLG. Yes, they have behavioral issues like any other middle schooler but they do not get disclipline referrals or discipline.
Probably because they don't have behavioral issues like the rest of the middle schoolers. In fact one of the teachers let slip to my daughter that they aren't really in AGT because of their intelligence, but because of their behavior.
I believe it. I half suspect that options like AGT, AAA, AFSL, and New Century Technology are efforts to try and stop "brain drain" of the kids in school whose families instill proper social values in their kids. As another poster pointed out - the Providence K-8 zone (where my daughter went and my son still goes) has more kids in private schools than any other district. People are voting with their feet.
What has been stated in this post is not all true. Williams AGT students are not isolated from the other Williams students. They are in general population for PE, lunch, and some music. Also they travel through the same halls and in some cases are taught by the same teachers. They have clubs and extra curriculars with the general population. Yes, they have a wing but it is not closed off. AGT is absolutely not a “private School.”
Checked with my daughter last night. Yes, they are in their own wing of the school. All of her classes are AGT-only. They have their own PE. They eat lunch in the lunch room, of course, but they are at their own tables. Her music class (piano) is AGT-only. So indeed, they are pretty much like an isolated private school within the school.
And it's fantastic. My daughter, who was previously bored in school, is now challenged. For the first half of the school year, every day she came home elated and exclaiming at how fast the school day went by. (Of course by now the work load is becoming not so "fun"). She has commented on how smart her classmates are and how she feels like she has to work hard to keep up with them (whereas before she would spend a lot of time in class reading on her own). I told her of the Einstein quote that, "If you are the smartest person in the room you are in the wrong room."
Just last weekend we went down to Montgomery for the Alabama Council for Technology in Education State Competition. My daughter and her teammate took 1st place in the regional competition and took 3rd place at the State competition. AGT had 8 students place at State.
We are so lucky to have this opportunity. My son is currently in GATE at Providence; I hope he can go to AGT also. This is what school should be.
Checked with my daughter last night. Yes, they are in their own wing of the school. All of her classes are AGT-only. They have their own PE. They eat lunch in the lunch room, of course, but they are at their own tables. Her music class (piano) is AGT-only. So indeed, they are pretty much like an isolated private school within the school.
And it's fantastic. My daughter, who was previously bored in school, is now challenged. For the first half of the school year, every day she came home elated and exclaiming at how fast the school day went by. (Of course by now the work load is becoming not so "fun"). She has commented on how smart her classmates are and how she feels like she has to work hard to keep up with them (whereas before she would spend a lot of time in class reading on her own). I told her of the Einstein quote that, "If you are the smartest person in the room you are in the wrong room."
Just last weekend we went down to Montgomery for the Alabama Council for Technology in Education State Competition. My daughter and her teammate took 1st place in the regional competition and took 3rd place at the State competition. AGT had 8 students place at State.
We are so lucky to have this opportunity. My son is currently in GATE at Providence; I hope he can go to AGT also. This is what school should be.
Correct, and that's the way it should be. I see no reason at all that kids who are willing to work and are smart enough should be held back or "mainstreamed".
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