Washington State's Budget Cuts to Education

As a concerned parent with 3 kids in online ALE programs and a son in brick and mortar special education, I have been following the proposed budget cuts in my state pretty closely and have participated in the parent/family/friends protests and coordinated mailing and phone call movements urging the government here to look elsewhere for cutting the budget down. But as you can see from this recent article on the community site for the families of online students in this state, our pleas were basically ignored. As a direct result of this legislation, ALE programs, including the online one that my kids attend, will have their state funding cut by 10-20%. Here is an excerpt from a letter that I received about the cuts just this morning:

"The breaking news is that OSPI (Office of Superintendent of Instruction) is right now ruling that the basic education funding for all ALE (Alternative Learning Experience) students will be cut to 80%. An exception is made for students enrolled in an online program that provides an average of one hour per week of synchronous digital contact. Those students will receive 90% of basic education funding .

Online program providers are just getting this news, too. They will need to make changes to their programs to reflect these drastic cuts to funding. Since staffing and curriculum costs typically exceed 80% of the operating costs of online programs, most programs will need to make detrimental cuts to match the funding cuts"

On top of that, cuts were also made to the funding for teacher salaries and pensions, while increasing measures requiring teachers to find ways to reduce the achievement gaps between students, which from what I have seen basically amounts to the government looking for ways to blame the teachers when insufficient appropriate funding and/or lack of parental support  leads to decreased test scores.

I also noticed in looking over a report that I downloaded from WA's OFM that the budget also calls for the creation of a whole new agency to direct school district spending:

"A group of experts is created through the Educational Services Districts to help school districts with financial planning and monitoring."

This group of experts is expected to cost the state $3 million dollars and as far as I can tell is basically just going to add one more layer to the mountain of red tape that the school districts have to wade through in order to do much of anything for our kids.

Let me tell you, if I was a licensed teacher or any other professional for that matter, especially in this economy, I certainly wouldn't stick around in a state that cut my income while at the same time tying my hands and demanding better results, so what exactly is the state's plan here? Are they trying to cut costs by encouraging all the teachers to quit?  what's more how are we supposed to encourage college students to become teachers so we can cut down class sizes and improve education in general if we don't pay them a decent salary and offer reasonable benefits for teachers already in the system. Just one more example of ways that our society is shooting itself in the foot.

Double Standards for Sex Offenders?

I just came across an article that really upset me.
http://femalesexoffenders.com/fso/index.php/the-news/355-rachel-brock-pleads-guilty

Now, first off, I would like to say that I'm not terribly happy with the way that the sex offender lists are supposed to work anyway. When used as intended, the system is set up to basically destroy the chances that any normal semblance of life can be achieved by anyone who has ever failed to use common sense enough to choose a willing sexual partner who is also legally old enough to make that choice. As a parent I fully understand the mentality that would want that, but as a human being that knows that one mistake doesn't define a person I have to protest the idea that all people who have once upon a time committed an error in judgement should be automatically viewed as horrible people for the rest of their lives. But whether I like it or not this is currently the law of the land.

What makes this system even worse in my opinion, is the ease with which the system is abused to punish people who do not deserve it. For example, I personally know a gentleman that as a teenager had a consensual relationship with another teen, but her parents pressed charges for rape and it stuck. Now the poor guy is on the sex offender list for life despite the fact that he was only 16 at the time and his 15 yr old girlfriend was very open about the fact that she had NOT been forced. It's been nearly 15 yrs now and that man is still paying for that one bad choice.

This article, however, led me to discover a whole new way that the system is apparently being abused- by apparently not applying the same rules to women.

I am a big fan of being a woman who has the ability to own property, to vote and press charges against people who actually hurt me, but more and more lately I have been seeing news articles about women who are insisting that they get more lenience on top of it all. I am not a huge fan of the sex offender list program, but if you are going to have a system like that, it needs to be applied equally to everyone. It's no wonder there are so many men's rights groups with rapidly growing numbers! Ladies, if you expect guys to respect you and treat you fairly, you are only shooting yourself in the foot to then turn around and demand special treatment.

Christian = Automatically Trustworthy?

While surfing the web today, as I often do, I came across a comment that has been eating at me ever since. It was a review on one of those on-line business guru sites. The site itself was pretty typical- almost completely forgettable on it's own, as it is so much like so many others that I have seen- but this comment really bothered me. 

The commenter claimed to be someone who had been using the system for a few months now with incredible results- as I said, typical of this type of site- but what bothered me was that the poster said that one of the things that they most loved about the company was the fact that it was a Christian company because “it makes it so much easier for people to trust” them.

I have no problem with people who believe in Christianity- much of my extended family is Christian and between us the only effect that their faith being different from mine has on our relationship is that we have agreed to disagree. We simply do not discuss religion aside from the 
occasional insider jokes, which due to my religious upbringing I still get and laugh along with like everyone else. My problem with the statement made in this comment comes not from a problem with Christianity, but from the implication that if you're not christian, then you are not trustworthy. That type of attitude really pisses me off.

Trust based on professed religious belief is, at best naive. Trust is earned by a perception that we "know" what someone else will do. It's supposed to be based on our observations of a series of choices which altogether help to ID the personal code of whomever we are trying to under-
stand. This personal Code, which literally refers to the belief structure in our heads that we guide our choices by, is the very definition of morality and while it can be and often is influenced by religion, Morality and Religion are NOT THE SAME THING!

There is nothing that I have ever experienced, or read, or otherwise learned that has led me to the belief that any one religion is more or less “Morally Upstanding” than any other. They all have “black sheep” and other skeletons in their folds. Nor am I trying to suggest that those without religion are ultimately better. What I am saying is that I resent the idea that that if I am, say, Muslim or Jewish, than I am somehow less trustworthy than a devoted Southern Baptist or a confirmed Roman Catholic just because I don’t accept the idea that Jesus was the savior that was prophesied in the ancient times described in the early books of the Bible, the Torah and the Koran.


The reasoning behind this offensive comment, I know, is that if people share religious beliefs, then their morality will also be similar, but the reality of life is that just because someone says they are of a particular faith doesn’t mean that they actually practice the precepts of that faith and even if they do, there may be other factors that can cause their moral code to be very different from someone else in that same religion.  Let’s look at some “religious” people throughout history:

Roman Catholics are one of my personal favorite examples. When people think of this religion, there are a few names that almost always come up, like Pope John Paul II and Mother Theresa who are both well known for their good works throughout the world. But the same people who would brag about these examples of “shining morality” would rather that people not realize that Adolf Hitler was also a devote Catholic who was actually supported by Pope Pius XII despite the fact that the pope was well aware of the Nazi agenda. Was Pius any less Catholic than John Paul? No. But their life experiences caused their moral codes to differ greatly.  

Another example that people like to gloss over is all of the priests, ministers, and other religious figures who have been caught sexually abusing members of their “flocks” over the years. Are they any less religious than their more … chaste.... brethren? In some cases yes, but many times they are just as otherwise upstanding as anyone else in their respective clergy. 
What about the “Christian” groups that bomb abortion clinics and murder doctors and other medical staff that work in these clinics? Are they justified because they’re religion says that abortion is wrong? or does killing those people and destroying  those facilities make them just as “Godless” as those that they seek to punish? 

Here’s another pet peeve group of mine-  those “Christian” groups that protest around Planned Parenthood facilities. Every time that I see them around the Planned Parenthood building in my hometown with their signs depicting aborted fetuses and decrying the Planned Parenthood company for “killing babies” I have to wonder how many of those protesters have ever even walked into one of those facilities to see what it is like. My guess is that at least 95% of them have never even knowingly spoken to anyone that works for that company, though I would not be at all surprised if many of them actually attended the same churches. Despite what these protesting groups would have us believe, Planned Parenthood does not encourage everyone who comes through their door to have an abortion- in fact abortion is the absolute last resort in their books. 

The truth is that Planned Parenthood’s foremost mantra is education BEFORE pregnancy.  Many of the people that they see everyday come to them to learn how to be responsible about their sexuality and for assistance in not only preventing pregnancy  but also planning for when they ARE ready to have children. Their programs for sex education are far more complete than what is often taught in most schools and stresses abstinence as the best option for preventing pregnancy with preventative measures like condoms and birth control pills as SECONDARY lines of defense against unwanted pregnancies. Abortion is only mentioned as a last resort AFTER discussing other solutions to unwanted pregnancy such as adoption. 

My life partner and I were both raised in deeply religious households, but when we reached adulthood, we both came to the realization that neither of us truly believed in God. We renounced the religions that we were born into and joined the growing number of people in our world who are professed atheists. When we “accidentally” got pregnant with our oldest child, I suppose we could have looked to abortion as an option, but despite the fact that we were not in the best financial situation at the time, we really did not consider abortion to be a viable option for us- not because we feared punishment from some omnipotent God, but because, despite the fact that it had happened earlier than we had originally planned, we had always wanted to have children and we saw this as an opportunity rather than a problem to be solved. Does that mean that somehow we are better than say a 16 year old rape victim that chooses to abort a fetus because of the traumatic experience that caused the pregnancy? I don’t think so.  But neither does our lack of belief in an all powerful super being make us bad people. 

Just because I am an Atheist doesn’t mean that I am a bad person. I still follow the laws in my community and help my neighbors and do some charity work when I can. I’m generally dependable, loyal (sometimes to a fault), and honest. I teach my kids to be honest and friendly and to play fairly with their friends. I just don’t attend church- mostly because I do not believe in what the church I was raised in teaches and have yet to find another church that teaches anything I believe to be truer. I believe that to continue to attend a church that you do not actually believe in is hypocritical and I refuse to do so “just to keep up appearances” which seems to be what many people do these days. How does that make me less worthy of trust?