Elementary District Programs: Fill & Download for Free

I was your kid.In third grade, I tested into the gifted program. Yay! The gifted program for my school district was held in a separate building, and on one day a week kids were bussed there from all over town, including some homeschooled kids. One kid, George, was homeschooled because of a severe peanut allergy.The district had made arrangements to keep the entire building peanut free and absolutely sterile so that he’d be safe. All the ‘gifted’ kids were taught to wash their hands and faces thoroughly when they first came in to get rid of any allergens from breakfast, and again after lunch just in case. The teachers immediately wiped down every surface food touched.When I tested into the gifted program, the district sent my parents a mailer that included this information and asked them to make sure to pack nut-free lunches every Wednesday. My father, never one to look after others’ safety, decided that this was a violation of my free speech. That first Wednesday, he sent me with a PB&J and a nutty granola bar.One of the other kids noticed my lunch and asked about it, then brought me to a teacher. It was the first I’d heard that I was in the center of a free-speech battle. I was nine. No one had showed me the letter from the district. I ate lunch that day on the front steps of the building with a teacher who then walked me through a thorough washing of my hands and face. The teachers called my father, but the sandwiches continued.We developed a routine. I left my lunchbox on the front steps of the building, then ate outside with a teacher and any friends who wanted to join me in my parentally imposed isolation. It was embarrassing. It made my stomach feel all twisted up, especially because by then George had become a good friend.The teachers called my house again. I asked my parents to pack something different, and even got in trouble for trying to sneak the sandwich out of my bag before the school bus picked me up.Two months in, the teachers and I agreed on a deal to keep everyone happy. My father sent the poisonous rebel sandwiches every week. My teachers and I threw them away in an outdoor trash can. At lunch time, a teacher walked me across the parking lot to the junior high to pick out a peanut free lunch from the cafeteria, which the teachers took turns buying for me out of their own pockets. Then we walked back across the parking lot to the Gifted and Talented building, where I ate lunch with everyone else.This continued for two years, until my parents deemed me old enough to pack my own lunches. And to this day, I’m sick of peanut butter.Your elementary school kid doesn’t want to be a pawn in your petty “free speech” battle. And excepting certain medical conditions, your kid can survive without peanuts.If you decide to be a “rebel, protecting your child’s freedom,” the best case scenario is that you make two kids, your own and the one with the allergy, feel weird and singled out, and your kid learns a scary lesson about how you react when someone comes to you with a problem. The worst case is that you kill someone.I’m betting your kid doesn’t want to hurt a classmate or be known as the boy whose father is trying to kill George. I sure didn’t. So suck it up and skip the peanut butter.

Without context, this photo seems to depict your average ‘90s teenager. But there's a lot more to it.Many of you recognize her as Rachel Scott. If you don’t, here is her story. Her elementary school had a bullying problem. But Rachel Scott befriended a boy who was severely bullied. They started hanging out a lot and became friends. An international student came to the school and was made fun of because of her native country. She was sitting alone at lunch when Rachel asked to sit with her, and they also became friends.She founded the chain of kindness movement to combat bullying. This became an elementary school program where every time something kind happen, a new paper chain would be added with the name of the person being bullied and the student who helped out. Kids were also taught to not discriminate against people and how bullying will negatively effect your future. It caught the attention of the district and she became a school activist.She attended Columbine High School in Colorado. Two students brought guns to school on April 20, 1999, and the infamous shooting ensued. It was the first such high school massacre with so many victims in U.S. history. Rachel was one of the first students shot and killed, just outside one of the school’s exits. A year after her death, her father found the drawing below in her room.“These hands belong to Rachel Joy Scott and will someday touch millions of peoples hearts.”This picture gave the Scott family an idea to continue her anti-bully group but with more power. And today millions of schools in America know the story of Rachel and many make chains. The longest one ever made was over 10,000 feet. People also make walls of kind statements using sharpies. And by the end of the year, it gets shown at a Rachel’s Challenge meetup.Rachel Scott on her Prom night in 1999 (below) just two days before being killed at school.

Integration of the school system.Or, more precisely, opposition to integration of the school system.Let me explain.In the late 1940s and early 1950s, America’s public education system was first rate.Unless you were black. If you were black, your education was fourth rate at best.That was because there were two school systems in most jurisdictions - one for white people and one for black people. This went from elementary education to university education and into professional schools.Now, in 1896, there was a Supreme court case called Plessy v. Ferguson. It allowed public facilities to be segregated as long as they were functionally equal.But by the 1950s, it was clear from law schools to universities to high schools to elementary schools that the public facilities for blacks were not equal. Not even close.And in 1956, in a case called Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court reversed itself, saying that separate facilities were inherently unequal.That was the result of years of hard work by this manThurgood Marshall. A graduate of Howard Law School in Washington D.C. because the University of Maryland Law School was “whites only”. Maryland was also free - Marshall had to pay to go to Howard, which was the only ABA accredited law school in the country that had a majority black student body.And Marshall didn’t start by trying to desegregate elementary schools. He started out by desegregating the University of Texas Law School, which was whites only. The University of Texas did everything it could to keep blacks out of its law school. It offered to pay for tuition to a law school that did accept blacks. It tried to put black students in a corner behind a screen. It even offered to open an all-black law school.And in that case, the Supreme Court laughed in its face - how can you build a brand new law school and think it could be the equivalent of a law school with an actual reputation?But after Brown, the fight against integration didn’t end. No sir.The people who were intent on keeping schools segregated just changed their tactics, like setting up school districts based on the demographics of the population, so that school district lines were drawn around black and white neighbourhoodsBut it turned out the best tactic was to destroy public educationIn many places, taxes were cut so that people could afford to send their kids to segregated private schools. There was a “public system” but it was totally inadequate.As this trend spread, with taxes being lowered and school funding dropping, more and more people started to send their kids to private facilities, which were less likely to be mixed race. That posed a problem for poor white people.Until someone came up with the idea of a “chartered school”, a private school that received government funding. This became “school choice”. Instead of having to send your kid to a school that had the same racial mix that your neighbourhood did, you sent them to a school that didn’t. You paid a premium for this, but it seemed to be worth it.Because the American educational system still has good schools. The problem is that they are in neighbourhoods that are rich and white.Connecticut’s courts last year had to decide a school funding case and were told that the state was too poor to provide funding to disadvantaged schools. “That’s strange” said the court “because there’s evidence that you provided $50 million in discretionary funding to schools in wealthier districts”.And schools aren’t the only thing suffering. If you wonder why there are so few public pools now when they used to be common, it’s because governments stopped funding them when they became integrated. If you wonder why programs like SNAP are under attack, it’s because black people benefit more from the program even though more whites use it.