Education, Vocation, Veterans, a plan to help all

By Susan F. Rzucidlo, 9/27/13

First, introductions, I am Susan Rzucidlo, I am a mom, advocate, small business owner and someone who believes wholeheartedly in what Margaret Meade said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I have taken on cases for families and issues that are well beyond my professional training because I believe so strongly in working to make things better and I believe that even as tied up in bureaucracy and inertia that systems can be there ARE ways to make things better.

People often ask me how or why I get involved in certain activities. Now that I think on that, they actually ask me if I go out looking for trouble or does trouble just find me? I will stand by the statement that I hear, read or come upon an cause that touches my heart and needs to be fixed that I can’t help but work on it and try to make things better. I just started on a new project so I thought I would start a blog and bring readers along with me. My hope is that others may see that working to make the world a better place is not preposterous or the act of someone who is delusional. It is the act of someone who believes one person can make a difference and one person should try.

So, here we go. I was reading the Delaware News Journal a few weeks ago and in it there was an article about the backlog of cases at the Veterans Administration. These cases are for the men and women who bravely served our country and now are waiting 12–18 months and longer to be able to access the services we promised them. When I read that I thought, “that is unacceptable, something has to be done.”

I spoke to a few people I know and below is my first draft of my proposal to make things better. Tell me what you think!

Draft Proposal: Student Interns to Work in VBA for credit and work experience

By Susan F. Rzucidlo, Speak Unlimited Inc.

Problem: The VA at 5000 Wissahickon Ave, in Philadelphia, needs office support staff in order to allow their Decision Review Specialists to work through the backlog of pending cases. Funding to provide for office support staff is not sufficient (which is a Congressional issue).

Problem: Students who have disabilities need real-life opportunities to learn skills that are marketable. They also need opportunities to build a resume that will make them more employable

NOTES:

§ Students who have disabilities are entitled to education services until they turn 21 years of age.

§ Transition to adult age services is a targeted issue at the local, state and federal levels.

§ Having students work outside of their school to learn both hard and soft skills is a model that has been proven to be successful.

Possible solutions: I am proposing an OVR/Education/VA partnership that would place Special Education Students in unpaid but graduation credit earning internship positions in the VA for half days, (similar to a VoTech Education) with a teacher and OVR job coach to learn office skills. I am envisioning two sets of students to give the highest number of students the opportunity to learn these skills. Working in a real work environment would improve the students’ employability because they will have learned both the hard and soft skills necessary to get a job and also keep a job once they graduate.

This internship would improve the transition plans from the schools, increase graduation and after graduation employment rates, while reducing the amount of lower level services needed from OVR after gradation. These students would also increase the productivity rate at the Veterans Benefit Administration, which would reduce the backlog disability claims, improving service to our Veterans. Everyone wins.

Trust me, I understand that there are a lot of moving parts in this proposal but it is doable if we can get the right people at the table who want to work to improve our schools, communities, and service to Veterans.

Coming soon! updates and progress. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Diane Ravitch Launched, Yinzer-Style

From Yinzercation, 9/18/13

[The following excerpt also corresponds closely to the content of Dr. Ravitch’s talk at the Free Library of Philadelphia, 9/17/13; you can listen to her entire talk online at the Library’s podcast listing for 9/17/13]

…In her lecture, Dr. Ravitch explained how and why these things are happening all across the country, promoted by a corporate-style-reform movement. One after the next, she held up the promises of the reformers and pronounced them “hoaxes.”

In her talk, and backed up by pages of data in her book, Dr. Ravitch offered abundant evidence that the reformers’ “solutions” for public schools are actually hurting our children. From cyber charter schools, to parent trigger laws, to vouchers, mass school closures, merit-pay, high-stakes-testing, and mis-used teacher evaluation systems, she demonstrated the perverse consequences of these efforts. Most crucially, she explained why we must pay attention to racial segregation and poverty – and how privatization does nothing to solve the larger issues that are truly affecting our students and schools.

Dr. Ravitch offered no silver bullets. But she did offer plenty of evidence-based solutions. She advocates for pre-natal care for all expectant mothers; universal, quality early childhood education; smaller class sizes; a re-thinking of charter school laws so that public schools and charter schools can truly collaborate; wrap-around services such as healthcare and social services in the schools; tests designed by teachers to measure student learning and the elimination of most high-stakes-testing; efforts to strengthen the teaching profession; and the protection of local, democratic control of public schools.

Sound familiar? This is exactly the vision that our community has put forward this year through dozens of town hall meetings, rallies, neighborhood discussions, conversations with legislators, and grassroots actions for our schools. [“A Vision for Great Public Schools”] Never once have we heard someone say we should focus on getting rid of teachers, closing schools, or slashing budgets. On Monday night, I said, “We’re not interested in talking about how to fire teachers – we want more teachers in classrooms with our kids,” and one-thousand people roared together, “Enough is enough!”

In her Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch promotes the kind of school day and rich education that we have in mind for all kids:

If we mean to lift the quality of education, we should insist that all children have a full curriculum, including history, civics, literature, foreign languages, physical education, mathematics, and science. We should make sure that every child has the chance to sing, dance, write, act, play instruments, sculpt, design, and build. Students need a reason to come to school, not as a duty, but for the joy that comes from performance and imagination. [p. 325]

Several student leaders from the Westinghouse Bulldogs high-stepping marching band joined Dr. Ravitch on stage to explain what has happened to arts education, music, and band at their high school. Despite the proud Westinghouse legacy that includes many of this country’s jazz greats (think Billy Strayhorn, Al Aaron, Mary Lou Williams and a host of others), the ragtag band has almost no instruments, hasn’t had new uniforms in more than a dozen years, and can’t even afford to buy drumsticks. Yet the students are passionate about holding their band together. In response to their statement, the Rev. David Thornton issued a full-throttle call-to-action to the audience and our collection raised over $1,600 to support the Bulldogs.

But a collection is not enough. The fact that we shouldn’t have to do this at all, is precisely Diane Ravitch’s point. Our public schools are public goods, and we must treat them that way – not as businesses making widgets. Public education is a community responsibility, but the driving ideals of privatization – competition, choice, measurement, rank sorting, punishment, efficiencies – undermine that shared obligation. Dr. Ravitch explains,

The more that policy makers promote choice – charters and vouchers – the more they sell the public on the idea that their choice of a school is a decision they make as individual consumers, not as citizens. As a citizen, you become invested in the local public school; you support it and take pride in its accomplishments. You see it as a community institution worthy of your support, even if you don’t have children in the school. … You think of public education as an institution that educations citizens, future voters, members of your community. But as school choice becomes the basis for public policy, the school becomes not a community institution but an institution that meets the needs of its customers. [p. 311]…

read the full post at Yinzercation

Congress Fiddles while America Dies

by Tom Buglio

Yesterday’s mass shooting at the Navy Yard by yet another mentally disturbed young man is becoming depressingly ordinary.  Twelve people were shot to death by a young man with an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle and a pistol for no reason.

Since Sandy Hook last December, America has suffered over 20,000 gun deaths, including 6 by the Santa Monica shooting in May, and 3 by the evicted man in Saylorsville PA at a government meeting.  In fact, more people have died by gun violence in this country since 1968 than in all of the wars in American history!

Yet, there is no sense of urgency to do anything about it, other than 7 states who have enacted tougher laws.  Colorado was one of them, and what was the result? The gun rights advocates, funded by the NRA, engineered a recall election that ousted two brave legislators whose only ‘crime’ was passing universal background checks and 15 bullet magazines. With only 11% of voters weighing in, this was truly the will of the rabid minority over the will of the people.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Congress has far more important things to attend to, like voting to repeal ‘Obamacare’ for the 41st time, or deciding whether or not to keep the doors of government open.  

The Naval shipyard, where the recent shooting occurred, is in Congress’s backyard. Will this wake them up to deal seriously with the life and death problem of gun violence in America? Not likely, when even the shooting of a colleague, Gabby Giffords, did little to create the urgency needed to make meaningful change in the gun violence that runs amok in our nation.  

The next time you hear a politician say that ‘new laws won’t do any good, just enforce the ones on the books,’ remind them of what happened in Australia.  In 1996, after a particularly horrific mass gun violence incident, Australia’s government enacted sweeping laws on common sense gun safety within 3 months.  The result? No mass shootings in Australia since!  This can only happen here when our politicians stop fearing the backlash of the NRA, and stand up to do the right thing: protect American lives, instead of their own careers.

Your Half-Eaten Sandwich’s Dirty Secret

Kiera Butler, Mother Jones, 9/16/13

A full third of the world’s food is wasted. According to a new report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, discarded food accounts for a staggering amount of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, if food waste was a country, its 3.3 gigatonnes of emissions would make it the third highest-emitting country in the world, after China and the United States:

All charts reproduced with permission from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

(LULUCF refers to “land use, land-use change, and forestry”—so this chart doesn’t take into account all of the carbon emitted when a rainforest is converted to a farm, for example.)

What exactly makes all that waste and its emissions?,,,

Continue reading and see other interesting charts and analyses at Mother Jones