#florida school system

[poolboyservice]

ngl US schools need to actually fucking learn about disabled people

Keep note that it has been a few years since I've been to a school that isn't online, and (I hope) things have probably changed since then.  Along with this, this is from my personal experience and only my experience in a few schools I've been in, coming from the state of Florida, so it could be different for you or anyone else. So do take this with a bit of salt.  This isn't really a PSA as it's more of just a rant, but I just want this off my chest. 

Having said that, let's start. Also FYI I made this post on a different site, but I am putting this on here to maybe bring awareness on what I went through and/or bring light to others that may be going through this.

To put simply, TL/DR: Schools (especially the students and.. certain counselors) don't give a flying fuck about if you're disabled, if you don't have a cane, walking chair, crutches, or don't exhibit the most stereotypical form of a person with a disability: you will get mistreated. If you want more specifications, read below

In the amount of years I've been in school before 2020, almost every year actually sucked. Don't get it twisted, I love somewhat most of my teachers from that time, and one bus driver was pretty cool, but aside that, being at school actually sucked. I was disregarded of my emotions, and if I were acknowledged, I would either be belittled or treated with a form of "I'm actually so annoyed by your existence but I'm gonna pretend I'm not because you're a child and I don't wanna get in trouble". In cases I weren't treated like a idiotic drama queen, it was either my teachers/bus driver, or someone who tried to implements rules so I could actually focus and be okay, only to have it backfired because of everyone else.

By everyone else, I mean: bus drivers allowing violence and verbal abuse (not even kidding with that ngl), counsellors being belittling, insulting, and ignoring quite obvious issues, being dragged by quite a few teachers despite my willingness to walk by myself, ignorance of my disability/disabilities (hearing impairment and possible undiagnosed ADHD), lack of awareness of my quite obvious deteriorating mental health and rise in suicidal thoughts, and, obviously, semi-almost every employee's disregard and/or even prejudice to disabled people, specifically neurodivergent, hearing impaired people, and/or like the two in general.

An interesting example and pattern I've noticed are the students. Of course, kids are kids, and they probably don't give a shit, but in terms of disabled folk, they really didn't give a shit. Almost every single day, I and probably a few others had to endure a day of constant noise, unsolicited touching, insults, harassment, constant overstimulation, and even abuse in some instances. Hell, I remember one day (around the last year I was in IRL school) I actually snapped and had a mental breakdown on the bus, I was hitting myself, screaming, crying, you name it, I was most likely doing it. All because of the students. Despite them being told multiple times there are people who are very sensitive and need special treatment, they didn't listen at all, they never did.

As much as I was a bit sad for having to stay home in 2020 as I really liked my 3rd and 5th grade teachers (one of them bcz ngl she's one the reasons I'm still here and alive), I am beyond fucking glad that I didn't stay a year longer, because while I had some good memories, it was honestly kind of a nightmare, which led me to bottling up my emotions and pretending I wasn't hearing impaired for the sake of others, this obviously caused a lot of insecurities forming because of it.

(apologies for weird formatting, I'm not exactly used to writing big paragraphs on this website)

[fru1typunch]

Here's a little post ranting about the Floridian education system and how it fucked over public school librarians this year, from the adult child of one who spent his whole summer helping his poor mom try and keep up with Desantis's ridiculous requests.

Every school year, the librarian always gets a couple weeks with a "closed" library to take inventory of the school's stock at the end. Normal stuff, y'know, if a bit tedious and boring. Scan every. Single. Thing. See what you have and figure out who last checked out what you should have, that sort of thing.

Well, Ron Desantis, in his genius, decided that concept had to be applied to all the books in the entire school to determine if they're "appropriate" (by his batshit conservative standards).

My mom didn't JUST have to do the usual inventory thing for her own library. She ALSO had to do something similar but far WORSE for her entire school's personal classroom libraries.

The objective of this SCHOOL WIDE requirement was to "approve" every book in the school as "appropriate". Every. Single. Book. In. The. School. Not the school library, no, the SCHOOL. All classrooms.

My mom's an elementary school librarian. There's around 1000 students at her school, give or take, and around 50 or so classroom libraries to sort through. And this was supposed to be done over summer, before the kids came back in the fall. Entirely unpaid.

She had to personally approve around 25,000-30,000 books school wide based on whether or not they're "appropriate for kids" (again, by Desantis standards), entirely unpaid, in about 2 months. Keep in mind these classroom libraries had been pre-existing for many years or even decades in most cases, so it's kinda useless to just now care about whether the books are "appropriate".

Mind you, you can't read that many individual books in under two months and then approve them in the system if you tried, even if most were children's books. She spent every single day of her summer, her only real time off each year, logging into the online portal and manually approving books from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, looking them up and trying to determine if they might be okay by the new standards since she couldn't possibly have the time to read them all and check, and again, entirely unpaid on her own. Teachers were scanning in their classroom's books to the system to be approved by her in real time, so she really never could get very far ahead. At most she'd knock out a few hundred a day, which I think is wildly impressive given the circumstances.

Even with all that work, she couldn't open her library for nearly a month into the new school year this August because she spent every school day finishing that approval thing for the classroom libraries for teachers. At least by that point she got paid for it. She was also way behind on getting her library ready for the school year, she really hadn't had time to prepare like normal. It was a crazy stressful time for her all around, moreso than back-to-school time normally is each year.

I helped as much as I knew how to, which mostly just meant looking books up for her or texting back and forth with my friends that work at Barnes and Noble or Books A Million asking if they could skim through certain books that might pose a threat at times, and coming up to the school with her sometimes while she worked on approving books and I worked on preparing her library for "business" again.

My mom was upset because she didn't have time for a real summer vacation, the most she got to do was occasionally visit the beach a few hours away for a day trip. (On one of the beach days, she even took her blessed laptop with her to work on it in the car ride over.) She was in the thick of it neck deep all on her own for months with hardly any time off and no pay to show for it.

It's frustrating because if she were to have approved a book that a parent later complains about, it could mean bad news for her. Again, no way in hell would she have been able to both read every single book, determine if she thought it was okay by Desantis's standards, and then approve every single book within the system. She did her best, but she's still nervous someone will complain.

All this conservative bullshit around books is hurting so many kinds of librarians and educators in so many ways, so just take a moment sometime soon to appreciate your local librarians and public school teachers putting up with this crap. They could use the love. Maybe some strong alcohol. And a big wad of cash, they do a lot of shit unpaid.

And do vote these assholes out of office that are making these poor librarians' and teachers' jobs harder with no additional support or pay.

[politijohn]

Some good news

[ldthegreen]

If anyone, and I do mean anyone, here has information on what's going on with Florida's Education system or any Ron DeSantis laws relating to lgbtq+, medical, or schools I beg you to send me the links

Important Florida News below the cut

As a Florida high schooler, most of us have no idea what's going on except for what specific teachers choose to inform us of. We are all aware of the "Don't say gay" thing and that it applies to kindergarten through third grade. However, I have heard rumors that this has been modified to more grade levels and no one, including administration will give us direct answers on it. My school very nearly got rid of AP Psychology due to the governors thoughts, we were one of the few to thankfully get it back last minute. Another recent development is the new "phone rule" as it is commonly referred to. The entire student body and most teachers find it to be over generalized and a nuisance. Teachers have expressed concern over losing their jobs for possibly allowing us to use our phones. The way it is set up- that we "can only use phones for educational purposes" -prohibits us from even checking the time or briefly scrolling on our phones at the end of a class, even with administrative permission. Many Floridians in the school system are worried about the heavy book censoring along with these other issues. I have heard the term "private education" thrown about in different ways than private schooling. It is bad and we need help, but to make a change we need to know what's happening, and make others know too. So spread the word and please do what you can.

[b0bthebuilder35]

[sol1loqu1st]

THE INDIANA PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM BE (inadvertently or directly) FUCKING OVER THE AUTISTICS, HIGH FIVE

HFJDJFJSJFJSDJS FUCK THE INDIANA PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM ALL MY HOMIES HATE THE INDIANA PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM

[borntofishforcedtowork]

i hope ron desantis *** ** * ******* **** extremely painfully and slowly

[aahsoka]

i am getting paid very little to sub but i very much do care about whats going on with these kids and i wanna leave them all with something good

[guitarbomb]

Florida Man Christian Nolen Strums Guitar During Brain Surgery

Florida Man Christian Nolen Strums Guitar During Brain Surgery. In a remarkable display of courage and skill, Florida musician Christian Nolen serenaded surgeons with System Of A Down and Deftones hits while they removed a tumor from his frontal lobe. This extraordinary event took place at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, where Nolen’s unique…

[lucemxnox]

I mean... I already wanted to quit my job because of some of the things the principal has said and did that blatantly showed it was A) not student centered, B) an unprofessional and disrespectful workplace, and C) Literally so behind the modern research of education theory oh my god...

But finding out that one of our school board members is running for the House, has teachers and admin here loudly supporting her and asking everyone else to sign a petition for her, and LITERALLY LEADS THE LOCAL CHAPTER OF MOMS FOR LIBERTY is reallllly sealing the deal here.

[odinsblog]

🗣️THIS IS WHAT INCLUSIVE, COMPASSIONATE DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE

Minnesota Dems enacted a raft of laws to make the state a trans refuge, and ensure people receiving trans care here can't be reached by far-right governments in places like Florida and Texas. (link)

Minnesota Dems ensured that everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can get drivers' licenses. (link)

They made public college free for the majority of Minnesota families. (link)

Minnesota Dems dropped a billion dollars into a bevy of affordable housing programs, including by creating a new state housing voucher program. (link)

Minnesota Dems massively increased funding for the state's perpetually-underfunded public defenders, which lets more public defenders be hired and existing public defenders get a salary increase. (link)

Dems raised Minnesota education spending by 10%, or about 2.3 billion. (link)

Minnesota Dems created an energy standard for 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. (link)

Minnesota already has some of the strongest election infrastructure (and highest voter participation) in the country, but the legislature just made it stronger, with automatic registration, preregistration for minors, and easier access to absentee ballots. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded the publicly subsidized health insurance program to undocumented immigrants. This one's interesting because it's the sort of things Dems often balk at. The governor opposed it! The legislature rolled over him and passed it anyway. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded background checks and enacted red-flag laws, passing gun safety measures that the GOP has thwarted for years. (link)

Minnesota Dems gave the state AG the power to block the huge healthcare mergers that have slowly gobbled up the state's medical system. (link)

Minnesota Dems restored voting rights to convicted felons as soon as they leave prison. (link)

Minnesota Dems made prison phone calls free. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed new wage protection rules for the construction industry, against industry resistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new sales tax to fund bus and train lines, an enormous victory for the sustainability and quality of public transit. Transit be more pleasant to ride, more frequent, and have better shelters, along more lines. (link)

They passed strict new regulations on PFAS ("forever chemicals"). (link)

Minnesota Dems passed the largest bonding bill in state history! Funding improvements to parks, colleges, water infrastructure, bridges, etc. etc. etc. (link)

They're going to build a passenger train from the Twin Cities to Duluth. (link)

I can't even find a news story about it but there's tens of millions in funding for new BRT lines, too. (link)

A wonky-but-important change: Minnesota Dems indexed the state gas tax to inflation, effectively increasing the gas tax. (link)

They actually indexed a bunch of stuff to inflation, including the state's education funding formula, which helps ensure that school spending doesn't decline over time. (link)

Minnesota Dems made hourly school workers (e.g., bus drivers and paraprofessionals) eligible for unemployment during summer break, when they're not working or getting paid. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a bunch of labor protections for teachers, including requiring school districts to negotiate class sizes as part of union contracts. (Yet another @SydneyJordanMN special here. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a state board to govern labor standards at nursing homes. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a Prescription Drug Affordability Board, which would set price caps for high-cost pharmaceuticals. (link)

Minnesota Dems created new worker protections for Amazon warehouse workers and refinery workers. (link)

Minnesota Dems passed a digital fair repair law, which requires electronics manufacturers to make tools and parts available so that consumers can repair their electronics rather than purchase new items. (link)

Minnesota Dems made Juneteenth a state holiday. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned conversion therapy. (link)

They spent nearly a billion dollars on a variety of environmental programs, from heat pumps to reforestation. (link)

Minnesota Dems expanded protections for pregnant and nursing workers - already in place for larger employers - to almost everyone in the state. (link)

Minnesota Dems created a new child tax credit that will cut child poverty by about a quarter. (link)

Minnesota Democrats dropped a quick $50 million into homelessness prevention programs. (link)

And because the small stuff didn't get lost in the big stuff, they passed a law to prevent catalytic converter thefts. (link)

Minnesota Dems increased child care assistance. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned "captive audience meetings," where employers force employees to watch anti-union presentations. (link)

No news story yet, but Minnesota Dems forced signal priority changes to Twin Cities transit. Right now the trains have to wait at intersections for cars, which, I can say from experience, is terrible. Soon that will change.

Minnesota Dems provided the largest increase to nursing home funding in state history. (link)

They also bumped up salaries for home health workers, to help address the shortage of in-home nurses. (link)

Minnesota Dems legalized drug paraphernalia, which allows social service providers to conduct needle exchanges and address substance abuse with reduced fear of incurring legal action. (link)

Minnesota Dems banned white supremacists and extremists from police forces, capped probation at 5 years for most crimes, improved clemency, and mostly banned no-knock warrants. (link)

Minnesota Dems also laid the groundwork for a public health insurance option. (link)

I’m happy for the people of Minnesota, but as a Floridian living under Ron DeSantis & hateful Republicans, I’m also very envious tbh. We know that democracy can work, and this is a shining example of what government could be like in the hands of legislators who actually care about helping people in need, and not pursuing the GOP’s “culture wars” and suppressing the votes of BIPOC, and inflicting maximum harm on those who aren’t cis/het, white, wealthy, Christian males. BRAVO MINNESOTA. This is how you do it! And the Minnesota Dems did it with a one seat majority, so no excuses. Forget about the next election and focus on doing as much good as you can, while you still can. 👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿👏🏿

👉🏿 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1660846689450688514.html

[emmaestrella]

as someone who wants to get into one of the most difficult universities in florida, and i freak out whenever i have less than an A (89.6%) in a class. I missed three days of school for a big band trip and have two cs and a d because teachers put in zeros for makeup work. MAKEUP WORK that i did not have the chance to do yet cause i was fucking gone. Junior year is so stressful and im sure being a gifted kid on the cusp of burnout isn’t helping, but i feel like i have no casual friends, no free time, because i’m so focused on making sure my grades are up. And even then, with all my volunteer hours, grades, APs, honors classes, extracurriculars, and leadership experience, i might not even get in.

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

[entertainingthewhatifs]

Weekend Coffee Share, Bye, Bye, Summer Break!

Welcome to my Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie at Natalie the Explorer Blog. Natalie took a weekend off, and apparently, so did I, as I’m posting this on a Monday! Saturday I wrote: It’s a green tea morning (with natural caffeine) for me, but I made sure to drink coffee yesterday for a day of meetings and school preparation! Grab your coffee, tea, or whatever and let’s chat.**That us all…

[verystressedcollegestudent]

god ive just completely wasted the last two months of my life haven't i 🙃

[liyazaki]

via the Arkansas Advocate

it’s official: in Arkansas, library staff may now be charged with a Class D felony for providing books to their communities that are deemed “obscene”.

in Florida, school librarians and teachers can be criminally charged for checking out books to kids that dare to touch on LGBTQ topics & gender identity, thanks to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

book censorship in the US is at such an all-time high, book sanctuaries are popping up all over the country.

library staff aren’t physically safe, either. just over the past couple months, threats against libraries and their staff resulted in the temporary closure of “five public library systems due to bomb and shooting threats," ALA. active shooter trainings have become the new norm for me.

the censorship myself and my colleagues have been watching unfold over the last several years has felt like watching a slow-motion car crash.

but this bill? this feels like a death knell for my profession.

via Teen Vogue

when I was a confused queer kid growing up in an ultra-religious household, the library was my refuge. when I asked hard questions, librarians listened and gave me the tools I needed to answer them. in many ways, libraries saved my life. it's why I became a librarian.

I can't believe I'm living in times where future generations of kids may not have access to the same refuge I did, but it's happening.

if you live in the US and you care about protecting open, equitable access to information, please check out the American Library Association for anti-censorship resources in your state, info on contacting your representatives, etc.

you can also report censorship you see in your community and ALA will investigate (1-800-545-2433, ext. 4266; oif@ala.org).

I know this isn't my usual content, but libraries are standing on the edge of a horrifying precipice- one we can't escape on our own.

libraries are free society's canary in the coal mine, and all the alarms are singing. when libraries fall, nations usually aren't far behind.

this matters- and we need help.

[theories-fans-andwombats]

If I hadn’t been taught about periods in elementary school, I would have had next to no idea what it entailed or how to take care of myself during one. 

Plus, when I was in middle school, we didn’t have a unit where we learned about periods or the human reproductive system, at least not super in-depth. Just incredibly basic things, like what the reproductive organs were and whatnot. Seventh grade primarily focused on earth science and some biology, and eighth grade was physical sciences. I didn’t learn extensively about periods until ninth grade. Now I know every school is different and curriculums tend to vary depending on the school, but if they don’t teach it in elementary school, and they don’t teach it or teach just the basics of it in middle school, you could have kids not truly learning about their own bodies and periods until they’re 14 years old; considering the average age for getting your first period usually falls between 10 and 15 years of age, that’s honestly unacceptable.

“So if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in 5th grade or 4th grade, will that prohibit conversations from them since they are in the grade lower than sixth grade?” asked state Rep. Ashley Gantt, a Democrat who taught in public schools and noted that girls as young as 10 can begin having periods.

“It would,” McClain responded.

Unbelievable. Link to article.