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Education News Blog Archives
Education-News Blog posts insightful comments on the latest international news that render us taken-aback in the domain of the education facet of life. Education-News Blog: Department-of-Education News Judge Rules Against Department of Education: February 12, 2008 by Tim Sakahara
A group of homeless families have just won a lawsuit against the Department of Education. The families claimed the DOE was not giving homeless children the same schooling and transportation options as other kids. Federal Judge Helen Gillmor is ordering the Department of Education to fix its enrollment process and change the way it identifies and counts homeless families so they can be sure they get the help they need. The decision affects the estimated 18,000 homeless kids in the state. This year only 300 of them are getting help in schools. Alice Greenwood worked for the Department of Education for over a decade. Now she is suing them. She and her 7-year-old son are homeless. They were living at Maili Beach Park, but had to move after the beach clean up. Now she is at the Waianae homeless shelter, which is much farther from her son's school. "I've asked him many times if he wants to go to another school and he says no, I want to attend Hawaiian immersion," said Greenwood. The closest school to the new shelter is Kamaile Elementary, but Greenwood wants her son to continue going to Nanakuli Elementary because it is the only school on the Leeward side with the Hawaiian language program. That means an hour and a half bus trip each way. "Well if my car breaks down then I have to catch two buses for him to go to school. The majority of the time he's running late," Greenwood said. The state gives her son a ticket for the city bus but since he is only 7 years old he can't ride the city bus by himself, so she and others want the Department of Education to provide transportation to and from school.
"It's just a disaster. They're simply not doing what the federal law requires and we're in court today asking the judge to order them to begin implementing the law the way they're supposed to," said Paul Alston, Director of Alston, Hunt, Floyd and Ing Law Firm. Greenwood's attorney said schools have to provide transportation for the homeless kids. The state gets hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money every year to do so but the attorney's claim it is not being used properly. Instead the families said they were pressured into switching schools every time they move, which can be often when you're homeless. "Going to a new school you have to make new friends you don't know anybody there," said Olive Kaleuati, who said she is "houseless" and has had to transfer her two sons to new schools. "As a result every time a kid moves into a homeless shelter they fall farther and farther behind," Alston said. Judge Gillmor also indicated the school's transportation system is not working and wants more court hearings to decide how to fix it. No dates have been set. Education News Blog Comment:
The department of education, which-so-ever country does it belong to - each and every one of them, needs a total revamp to function in a humanly creative manner. Let's create new education news. Let's write a sensibly sensational new education news story. I propose replacing schools with clubs of knowledge. Let an entire mini-world be there in these clubs of knowledge and activities with laboratories and workshops concerning every subject and every topic, running their real business from inside the campus only; and let their in charges be the real great men and women of knowledge and insight in their fields who love their work, and enjoy it, and run it as a successful business venture as well! Such people are not easy to get. But then who says that education is an easy thing to impart? We must search for the best brains in our society and offer them the job of teacher-in charge of the business in the field of their specialization in the laboratory/workshop running inside the school campus only.
The better the faculty, the better the club of knowledge; and better goes its goodwill too! The clubs of knowledge being the real good business centers as well as the real good education centers! The students should be left free in those centers to roam around in any and every corner of it without the burden of any syllabus on their shoulders. They will love investigating into the real businesses that are professionally being run from inside the school campus only. Their feet will automatically stop them where they really and curiously belong to - of course, that is what their aptitude is! They will take all the pains on earth to learn about it at its deepest level. The men and women of insight who are their teachers along with being the in charge of the business concerned, will very much be there to guide them in whatever questions arise in their minds while learning about the whole thing in its totality. If they need a subsidiary knowledge of some other field along in order to learn this one in a better way, they will be guided to go and learn that also. Thus a dynamic syllabus will be there in the making for each and every student individually, tailor-made to serve her/his particular needs only. And curiosity will be the fuel that will make her/his learning an experience of joy that her /his whole learning process is! Where is the scope for any mechanical examination system in such a joyful scheme of affairs that the real education is! Also the clubs of knowledge can be located inside the community living premises only - that will make them both richer than they separately would be. How much petrol reserves of the world will this location clubbing of the two save too!
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