School is Often More than "Just School"

This is my 22nd year in public education. I spent my first four years as a 3rd grade teacher and high school football and basketball coach. The last 18 years have been in educational leadership positions ranging from K-8 Principal/AD to K-6 Principal/Title I Coordinator to Superintendent/HS Principal in Franklin to Superintendent here in York.

I've seen many changes in educational programming. We have more technology integration and career awareness now than ever before. We have more summer programming and before/after school programs. I've witnessed improvements in curriculum, instruction, and accountability. However, the one major change I've seen is the need for school districts to do more and more for children living in adverse situations. A few times a year I will get hit up by someone saying that schools are doing too much and that we should force parents to do a better job of feeding their kids, reading with their kids, getting them medical attention, etc. Well, that sounds nice and all but as educators we're in the "kid business" and we don't get too dictate to parents how much they read to their child or how much they feed them.

Schools are doing more for our students one simple reason.....our kids need it.

I attended a "Greater Nebraska Superintendents" meeting yesterday in Lincoln with 18 other superintendents ranging from Omaha to Bellevue to Grand Island to Gering to Minden and McCook. We learned that since the year 2000, the number of Nebraska children age 6 and under living at 100% poverty increased from 19,380 to 34,939. That's an 80% increase of young children living at 100% poverty in just 15 years. The National Average of children age 6 and under living at 100% poverty is 42%. Here in Nebraska, we are almost DOUBLE the national average. Wyoming is at 16%. Iowa is at 38%. Missouri is at 46%. Kansas is at 69%.

We have lots of families and children living in stressful and difficult situations. You're darn right we're proud to add before/after school programming. You're darn right we're excited to have our free lunch program over the summer. You're darn right we love to be able to provide six weeks of academic programming each summer. You're darn right we're going to have school in January when it is "cold" even though some people bash us left and right....schools are often the warmest place for many of our students and the only place they're going to get two nutritional and hot meals in a day.

York has 45% of our K-12 students that are eligible for free/reduced meals. This number increases to over 55% when you look at just our elementary students. This number jumps to over 60% when you look at just our pre-schoolers.

Our young people are this country's most valuable resource and we need education systems that are willing and able to provide ALL of them with the support, resources, and hope they need. It's not what we want to do....it's what we NEED to do.