In Los Angeles the schools feel like jails in disguise. I was home schooled and arrested for being outside when I was 15. The cops didn’t trust I was homeschooled and said it’s illegal to be outside of school.
One of the local high schools was designed by a prison architect, at least according to a quote from Steve Jobs…I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but the rooms would certainly fit in at one.
Here is an anecdote of something that taught me, being a person at the time more unfamiliar with US culture, that perhaps in the US childhood is not seen in the same way as in my country and others (I mean just look at this map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th... ). 13 years ago I went to an interview at the embassy to apply for my student visa. I was asked at some point about what I did during the 2 months I had spent in the US the last time I went. I very naively proceeded to truthfully describe my activities during those two months, one of which consisted of going to a public school for a short time (maybe three weeks). That was enough to get my visa denied and my tourist visa canceled. It did not make any sense to me that something so innocuous, which I did when I was eleven years old under the command of adults and not from my own will, would need to have, 7 years later, such "consequences." The interviewer of course questioned my knowledge of that word, and demanded proof that I had paid something to the school. I communicated with the school principal and managed to get a receipt of a $14 payment for buying a t-shirt, and got my visa which I had to renew after a year.
I mean it's not like the US Federal Government makes Children's Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Day) a holiday or anything. If you've done a project in Japan, you know you have to account for that day off.
I live in a neighborhood near/within the vicinity of Northridge, and this area I would describe as surburbs, while technically being within LA. It's nothing like downtown LA or other major cities. Not really sure, but it's not a place where they could ever enforce something like that. It doesn't seem like it would be a very productive use of police time.
Aside from the fact that this would never actually happen. Who in their right mind would put it in a letter asking parents to please make sure their kids attend classes...?
You should visit a CPS facility. Kids being locked up in open facility (the facilities are "open" in the sense the door is unlocked, they do send the cops after you the second you walk through) for minimally not attending school, for that matter without any actual proof of that beyond that a single teacher reported it (not even the attendance sheet, just a phone call) happens all the time.
Oh and if they do walk out, which they often do, getting sent to an actual cell for up to a year (mostly -thank god- 2 weeks) is the normal reaction. I'm not sure if those qualify as juvenile hall -they probably don't- but they certainly are cells.
CPS can do whatever they want to a kid. The kid "is not being convicted or punished" (just incarcerated and ripped from their environment, sometimes for decades), just "protected", so none of the normal protections apply. Often one has the clear impression that kids are imprisoned, not because of any problem with the kid or parents but because some CPS facility has a quota to meet (X children "helped" or no more subsidies). I even found an article that said judges felt pressured to lock children up because otherwise the closed facility claimed they would go bankrupt and the judge would lose the possibility of sending anyone there.
This is a problem because juvenile delinquency is and has been dropping like a stone for decades now, so those facilities have an ever smaller share of actual juvenile offenders, and a large majority of kids where some CPS worker (an individual) decided they needed help, and mostly the kids and parents refuse, of course, because these facilities are not seen as any kind of improvement for problems (and of course, they aren't).
Kids get sent to mental hospitals for skipping class (happened to my brother in California) and many other kids. Pretty much the same as incarceration.
Please don’t laugh things away because you think they don’t happen.
As a swedish expat for most of life, it's always struck as very strange the American insistence on personal responsibility and railing against the nanny state, yet public schools are treated like jails for children. Going to the bathroom requires a special pass??
Freedom is a dog whistle for, 'I'll do what is I want, unless I'm forcibly stopped.' Personal responsibility is a dog whistle for, "We don't care why or how things got the way they are, we are taking it out on you."
Consequently, children are policed, or they won't stay in their classes. And, there's no collective understanding of a better way to handle the situation.
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[ 13.1 ms ] story [ 752 ms ] threadSchools lose funding when a student falls below a certain attendance.
The schools even look like prisons at this point.
They actually enforce it where you are? Never happened here for me(LA suburbs)
For reference it was Loz Feliz. But I had further seen issues anywhere from Ktown to Santa Monica.
Oh and if they do walk out, which they often do, getting sent to an actual cell for up to a year (mostly -thank god- 2 weeks) is the normal reaction. I'm not sure if those qualify as juvenile hall -they probably don't- but they certainly are cells.
CPS can do whatever they want to a kid. The kid "is not being convicted or punished" (just incarcerated and ripped from their environment, sometimes for decades), just "protected", so none of the normal protections apply. Often one has the clear impression that kids are imprisoned, not because of any problem with the kid or parents but because some CPS facility has a quota to meet (X children "helped" or no more subsidies). I even found an article that said judges felt pressured to lock children up because otherwise the closed facility claimed they would go bankrupt and the judge would lose the possibility of sending anyone there.
This is a problem because juvenile delinquency is and has been dropping like a stone for decades now, so those facilities have an ever smaller share of actual juvenile offenders, and a large majority of kids where some CPS worker (an individual) decided they needed help, and mostly the kids and parents refuse, of course, because these facilities are not seen as any kind of improvement for problems (and of course, they aren't).
Please don’t laugh things away because you think they don’t happen.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/California-court-rules-t...
Also, although this one is a disturbing incident, publishing about it this week is probably meant to be sneakily political.
The Human Costs Of Kamala Harris’ War On Truancy
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-truancy-arrests...
Just receiving such a letter is stressful, and creates a paper trail documenting neglect.
What if CPS (child protective services) ends up getting involved?
Consequently, children are policed, or they won't stay in their classes. And, there's no collective understanding of a better way to handle the situation.