WALKING FOR AN EDUCATION? WHY?

Elementary school children walking two miles to school unsupervised, in all types of weather, and expected to perform at their maximum? Today, unbelievable, especially in metropolitan Montgomery, AL, the pace-setting capital city! This unbelievable stress on elementary school children walking this fall two or more miles to school, in the 36105 zip code of west Montgomery, was revealed in a walk on last Saturday, April 09, 2011, by parents, their children, and concerned community leaders and workers. They learned that the strain and imposition on the children, who are expected to take this walk twice a day—morning and afternoon, is overwhelming. The adults, with longer legs and a greater understanding of purpose, found themselves exhausted from the turnaround walk from the Chevron gas station, on the corner of Court Street and South Boulevard, to Davis Elementary School on Rosa Parks Street. This overwhelming taxation on these targeted and victimized children is cruel, heartless, and simply inhuman. To expect these children to walk past a familiar neighborhood school, i.e., Harrison Elementary School, to attend Davis Elementary School, where they are unfamiliar with most, if not all, the teachers, administrators, and staff, is abusive and brutal. How are they to rationalize and understand that they are having to suffer, because responsible adults refuse to procure the funds needed to keep them in a more accessible and comfortable school setting? Further, these elementary school children will not be able to function academically at their maximum, given the circumstance of an unreasonable condition and an unanswered question of “Why?” Since the standards of education are much higher today, nation-wide, than they were in the twentieth century, what kind of atmosphere is this condition creating for the education of the west Montgomery elementary school children? Back in the day (pre-‘70’s), when walking to school—even a great distance—was the norm, the children grouped themselves with older children—their siblings and relatives, as guides and supervisors, and they walked the distance. This was when gangs were not ruling the community and many of the high schools included the other grades. Today, buses that used to pick up school children, who lived over two miles from the neighborhood school, will no longer be accessible to these children. Rather, we are told either money is not available to fund the cost of picking them up, or the buses are accessible to students living in a different section of Montgomery, versus west Montgomery. If this is true, does this identify a race or class of people who are the less cared for and most vulnerable to being disfranchised, manipulated, and used? If so, is this the America we are striving to keep sovereign and concerned about the masses? This letter is an appeal to concerned MPS and city elected officials to “wake up and smell the stench” being created by this over imposing, irrational, and overwhelming task upon school children to walk past a familiar school to an unfamiliar school where they cannot justify or rationalize the change. Ultimately, we are saying that this change from neighborhood and familiar school is programming the children to fail educationally and to become a liability to the community and state, and, maybe, the nation, if they are not dead before they reach their teen years. Two choices we offer to remedy this unfair and unintelligible condition to our west Montgomery elementary school children are: (1) First, reinstate the school that is already accessible to these children, and with whom they have identity with through their parents and other relatives, who are alumni(ae) of the school; and (2) Find the money to restore the bus pick-up of the children for transporting them to and from the school. William Larkin Montgomery Educational Improvement Association

A Predators Path

Elementary school children fresh “prey” to predators! In a narrow section of west Montgomery, AL, alone, according to the Alabama Department of Public Safety Community Info Center’s website, there are 48 registered sex offenders (plus several hundred arrested, but not registered) in zip code 36105. The location of these sex offenders is either on the route or within a dangerous range of the planned new walking route of these elementary school children each school day, the 2011-12 school year, from their communities to Davis Elementary School. The Montgomery Public School System (MPS) is not providing school buses along this route, which, if done, would countermand or nullify the “sex predator” condition and provide a non-stressful condition for the children who will need to be mentally prepared to study when they reach the school. In essence, what would ordinarily be a 6 minute ride for our children, now shall become a 45 minute nightmare for them. The playground for these predators in this section of west Montgomery consists of a plenty of clandestine and concealed cover provided by poorly police surveillance, insufficiently lighted streets, abandoned houses, unpaved streets for safe walking against moving vehicles, and streets aligned with shrubbery and overgrown bushes and ditches. Even for “street smart” elementary school aged children, this is an untenable, indefensible condition in which to subject them. Obviously, the parents are not doing this; rather, the higher educational officials of MPS are doing this by taking the children out of their familiar community school environment and transferring them to a foreign environmental school. In this situation, they will, undoubtedly, have mixed-emotions, rendering them uncomfortable and uneasy, which will not condition nor prepare their minds to be focused on the task at hand. This is what is commonly known as “built-in failure.” Building on to the built-in-failure concept, what about children with a variety of disabilities, physically and mentally? These are conditions aside from the ordinary predator issue raised above; rather, these students constitute a significant number of elementary school enrollees. Yes, these are human beings with special needs. Have they been forgotten in this process of change? What are at least two alternatives to this faulty, illogical, and unreasonable condition to which the school children in this narrow section of west Montgomery are being set-up for? First, money should be, and can be, found to keep the neighborhood schools open. Second, where this cannot be done, for bona fide and justifiable reasons---with the parents and community’s buy in, walking partners, for security, and school patrol guards, for safety, will be needed. Is there anyone out there, as a change agent, to hear this clarion call for help? Our children need educating, not dissipation.

Karen Jones Montgomery, AL