Why are so many parents pulling their kids?
A mother in the Elvehjem neighborhood on the east side of Madison WI is pulling her children out of the public schools. “Never in my life did I think I would be making a police report today due to my 11 year old being physically assaulted at Kennedy elementary school today.
“Despite many meetings with teachers and also a meeting with one of the school districts superintendents … the bullying, physical harm and lack of a healthy learning environment continue almost daily!”
Her anguish elicited similar stories posted on the NextDoor social app. A respondent from the Eastmoreland neighborhood observed, “There are no consequences for bad behavior anymore … “This liberal attitude has to change. … People may be afraid to speak up. I’m not.”
“Same thing happened to my friend’s child at East [high school],” a neighbor from Cherokee on the NE side of town reported.
“She told them about threats to get him and he got jumped and kicked anyway, the next day. They can’t call the cops either. Teachers don’t dare intervene or they will be humiliated like that teacher at Whitehorse and, kicked out of their job.”
A mother from Lerdahl Park relates being “gaslit by the lying liars at the MMSD who pretended that bullying wasn’t going on.”
“It continued with my second and third child, and didn’t abate until my middle kid and youngest kid started doing remote education in 2020 due to COVID. .. Online education has been great. … There’s no bullying, no disruption, and it’s great being able to see my kid during lunch each day.”
A mother on South Avenue: “Glad I only have one kid left in school.”
Those are the everyday accounts that don’t make headlines like the case of six high school students who beat and robbed another student at Madison East high school 02-04-25. The victim was hospitalized for his injuries.
Schools lying about results
We post these testimonials to counter the narrative of Democrats that private choice schools are “unaccountable.” How accountable is a public school district that expels school resource police officers and can’t keep kids safe? How accountable a school district (Milwaukee) that won’t submit financial reports to the WI Dept. of Public Instruction? (Recounted in this “damning 41-page report.”) Or where 50% of students are chronically absent? And can’t read?
This week, Republicans on the WI Assembly Education Committee voted to make the WI Dept of Public Instruction stop lying about test scores.
Fixing the wrong problem
Here in Madison, for two of the three school board seats, incumbents are running unopposed for election. The Democratic party of has endorsed both, Nichelle Nichols and Ali Muldrow, for more of the same. Muldrow vows to “continue to push for implicit bias training for staff.” Is that the problem? Racist teachers in Madison?
The third seat IS contested. The Democratic Party of Dane County takes care to point out that it does NOT endorse Bret Wagner, a father of school children who is employed in the private sector.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: That’s enough for the indentured servants to stuff the ballot box for Mr. Wagner on April 1. They’re also supporting Brittany Kinser for state superintendent of public instruction in the Tuesday February 18 primary. Ms. Kinser supports alternatives to the unaccountable public schools.
7 responses to “If public schools are so accountable …”
Sounds like we need Clint Eastwood to move back into the hood and do a “Gran Torino” on the punks.
Why does Madison have constituents that stand by and allow incompetent people like Ali Muldrow dictate what’s right and wrong in the the Madison school system? She and the school board tossed out minority police officers from public high schools because THEY were the problem! What’s nuts about that decision? Let’s continue to let the inmates run the asylum. Don’t know about you but I’m sick of referendums that build new schools without even thinking “do we need new schools?” You can put lipstick on a pig it’s still a pig! Time for this city’s adults to get some balls and say ENOUGH!
What’s wrong with you people? People are afraid of Muldrow and her Gang! I’m really sick of this feel sorry for me crap because I’m Black. Do the work, make a sacrifice, own up to your mistakes and stop the pity party!
What you subsidize you get more of. Every time.
We may only hope that this talented Elvehjem neighborhood Mother has awakened a Sleeping Giant.
Curiously missing (for the most part) from this here neighborsnextdoor (THEY Report/YOU Decide!) post’s commentariat?
The…um…Usual Suspects (paging Karin K., Gerald E., et al) issuing spittle-flecked slobberings that the blame for all this is undeniably due to underfunding, ACT 10, overcrowding, Charter Schools, the Conservative WI legislature, White Patriarchal Supremacy, RAYcism, President Trump, and Institutionalized Structurally Systemic Intersectional Fragility©™®.
The Gotch
“Why do YOU suppose progressives are so afraid of school choice?”
Because they’re convinced the great unwashed will CHOOSE POORLY?
Anywho, to anyone who can fog a mirror, this chronic problem has been unerringly…er…MENTIONED** here times too numerous to mention.
That was ~seven (7) years ago; have things gotten better, stayed the same, or gotten worse?
The Gotch
Homeschool or die.
Everything you say about the deplorable state of Madison’s public schools is true, but part of the blame should be on the local media, who ignore anything that might tarnish the reputation of MMSD or upset the teacher’s union. They’d rather report on the opening of the latest craft brewery or spend 25 minutes out of 30 reporting on the unprecedented phenomenon of snow in Wisconsin in the winter than do an investigative report (assuming those still exist) on the mayhem that’s become a daily feature of life for thousands of kids.