Sokko
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If you read my post in the other topic, you know my high school sucks. Get this: It doesn't have an auditorium! The gym doesn't even double as one. All concerts, plays, etc. are held at the only school auditorium in the ENTIRE TOWN, at the middle school. That auditorium is in use 24/7 during the school year, simply because no one else has one. Heck, the freshman orientation for the high school is held at the middle school! Just think about it; any time the high school needs an auditorium for something, they have to schedule a bus pickup and drive over to the middle school. The principle has no way to address his entire student body, because there's no space big enough to do so in the high school. Not to mention the condition of all the schools in town, which is: ROTTING. They're all falling to pieces in front of our noses, and it's all we can do to keep up with the repairs, never mind actually clean them up, though they're all total trash pits. These schools are old, and they're DESPERATELY in need of renovation and a general fixer-upper.

So, here goes our only ally, the board of education. They spend 5 years drawing up a plan for renovations in our public schools, and finally this summer they put it to the vote. This would mean, MAXIMUM, a $200 per year increase in taxes. Hell, I get more than that per year, and I'm not even employed! And what happens? Defeated by a mile! Statistics tell the reason: Over a quarter of the population are senior citizens living on a fixed income, sitting on their asses in their cushy ranch homes which could easily sell for $300,000 in today's market, saying "I already got mine, and I'm not paying for yours!". More statistics: Less than 10% of families in this town have children in the public school system. So it's not just the seniors; people hear the word "taxes", and they say "No way! I'm not paying for the next generation's education! Why should I pay for something that doesn't involve ME?". And you know what's really horrible? A lot of people say "Why do they need an auditorium?". Well, while you're at it, why do we need art rooms? Why do we need chemistry labs? Why do we need lecture halls? Let the schools go to hell, so long as I don't have to pay a measly $200 more on my taxes for a couple years! That's pretty much the public attitude towards this kind of thing, and it really ticks me off. The school board spent FIVE FRICKIN' YEARS coming up with this plan, and the citizens of the town smack it down in a single day without so much as a backward glance. That's what I call self-centered. It more than ticks me off; it disgusts me. Possibly even more than the reek of decay at our falling-apart school.

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Mattcrampy
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Do they do parent-teacher nights?

Have a parent-teacher WHOLE DAY, and get the class and teacher to make snide jokes about the room next door that collapsed last week. Get some building material from the tip and get the maintenence staff to throw it off roofs. Perhaps hold a photo session in the mall, and show all the cushy pensioners how you have three week left to live. Scare the hell out of the town any way you can.

Anarchy: Sometimes it brings more order.

Matt

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zex20913
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Or...what you could do is suggest to the principal that he get a bus and take the entire school (maybe even more than just one school) and take it to the richest street in town, and hold classes in the actual street for a week or so. While doing that, at the ends where the school(s) end, put signs that say: This is now the future.

Or something to that effect.

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Sokko
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Parent-teacher nights would be great, with one obvious flaw: The only parents coming would be the parents of kids who are at the schools. Telling THEM that the schools are collapsing would be extremely redundant. Like I said before, less than 10% of our town's adult population have kids in school. Eventually the balance will shift and there will be more, but then it'll be too late and any plan you could come up with would cost 5x as much per year because of the schools getting worse over time.

Oh, and you know what really puts the icing on the cake? I just got my school letter for this year, and it states that "The dress code has been amended; bare midriffs and low-cut necklines are no longer appropriate for school." D'oh! Must've been the new principal.

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Sokko
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P.S. Demonstrations, protests, etc. will NOT help at this point. If we still want to do something about it, the board of education has to spend another five years assessing stuff and coming up with another plan. Considering how badly this one was swatted down, I don't think they're willing to do that again anytime soon.


P.P.S. The really funny thing is, everyone's taxes will go up now anyways to pay for the ongoing repairs to the schools; eventually it'll wind up costing them more then a complete renovation would! Mwahahahaha!

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Oneiromancer
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Sokko wrote:
Oh, and you know what really puts the icing on the cake? I just got my school letter for this year, and it states that "The dress code has been amended; bare midriffs and low-cut necklines are no longer appropriate for school." D'oh! Must've been the new principal.

They've gone too far this time! Imagine if they did that on the West Coast...there would be anarchy!

Game on,

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Mattcrampy
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Bah! Uniforms are standard in Australia! No school dress policy can be as nasty.

Although, I have to wonder, how do you get girl's tops that DON'T have a bare midriff? I'm not up on women's fashion, but I haven't seen many around.

Matt

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Sokko
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That's a very good question. It's kind of like how you can't really get a desktop computer with less than 512MB of RAM anymore.

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zex20913
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Wow...in those previous two posts, we've decided that computers have to keep getting more, and girls have to get less.

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mrimer
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Sure, there's lots of modest clothing around. But I'm expecting that if you ask any of those people with bared midriffs that they do it either because they want to dress that way, or because they think the guys want them to dress that way, and not because there's nothing else available.

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Sokko
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Indeed, your reasoning rings true. The point is, even if there were more modest clothing available than what is now, they still wouldn't wear it to school. Teenage nature makes you bristle when you're suddenly denied doing something that you had been able to do before with no consequences, and the immediate response is to do more of it than you previously did, just to spite the rule-makers.

Oh man, just think of the freshmen coming up here. All of their four years at middle school they've heard about the lax dress code at the high school, and just when they finally get here... denied! I feel sorry for them.

And one more thing. I heard last year that the middle school's principal broke her own dress code on the first day of school. Something about really high heels.



Okay, maybe one more thing. The high school now has something like a student Repair Committee, and they decide what gets fixed over the summer. It's sad that now we actually need an entire Committee of students to list all the things we need fixed.






I swear, this is the last thing! I went to open house yesterday so I could get re-oriented (this school is like a three-story maze, and I'm what you'd call directionally challenged), and I found my locker. Good: The lock opened on the first try. Bad: The interior is coated, and I mean _coated_ with graffitti. There isn't a single square inch of that locker that isn't covered over with some kind of writing implement. Buh.

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krammer
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Ahem. My school uniform is black trousers, white shirt, school tie, and balck blazer. However as I am now in sixth form I can wear instead smart suit or jacket and trousers, plain coloured shirt, and sixth form tie. Whoop-dee-do. And before you ask, this is standard in nearly every secondary school in Birmingham. The only way it could be worse is of it was a red blazer.

Oh, and the locker - as of this summer, the new sixth form common room has lockers. Except they don't lock and you're not allowed to bring padlocks. The reasoning is that because they don't lock, nobody will put anything valuable in and so nothing will be nicked. Which goes to show how little the teachers know about the kids in my school.

So you're not the only one.

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Mattcrampy
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You think THAT'S bad?

My year 12 school had a swimming uniform. Speedos.

Incidently, the girls uniform was replaced when they found out that the placement of school colours (including white) tended to... ahem... bring out the best in the girls. The bands of lighter colours were moved to the side, and dark all the way on the front.

The rival school did have red blazers, and we all thought they were tits.

Is this starting to remind anyone of that Monty Python sketch where there are 4 old men talking about their childhood, getting more ridiculous ("we used to live in a shoebox!") and would end with the observation that if you told the kids these days what it was like, they wouldn't believe you.

Matt

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Malarame
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Is this starting to remind anyone of that Monty Python sketch where there are 4 old men talking about their childhood, getting more ridiculous ("we used to live in a shoebox!") and would end with the observation that if you told the kids these days what it was like, they wouldn't believe you.

Oh yeah? Well when I was younger, I used to have to get up at 10:30pm, half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of cold sulphuric acid, go down, work 27 hours a day at the mill, pay my boss for the privilege of working there, and come home where my father and mother would kill me and dance about on my grave singing hallelujah, IF I WAS LUCKY!

Of course, if you tell that to kids nowadays, they just won't believe you.

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Sokko
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Well I just found out that, despite the fact that every single wall in this gigantic 3-story school is lined with lockers, everyone has to share a locker. That's right; some other person whom you've never met and don't know about has complete, anytime access to all your stuff. Kind of creeps you out, doesn't it?

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