Minutes 05-28-2015 - Laserfiche WebLink

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• Our teachers have been underpaid for too long. Please cover the state-mandated pay raise so that the school district won't have to cut teaching positions yet again. The school system has been cut to the bone. We know the problem is coming from the state legislature, so we must also demand they restore the necessary funding, and I promise to help in that. But in the meantime, we must cover their negligence. The education of our children is the most important role of government. We cannot make our children and their teachers suffer because of the poor support from the state. I support any necessary tax increase to cover this. We have to do it. Thank you, Dan Bernard Kingston Drive Chapel Hill, NC 27514 • Dear Commissioners, I want to thank you for your ongoing support of the CHCCS schools, and I want to share with you a brief glimpse of what our schools do each day that is so much more than academics. The other day, my kindergartener, Jacob, and I were reading a book in The Magic Tree House series. For those of you who haven't had the privilege of reading this series aloud to your children, let me enlighten you. Two children, Jack and Annie, travel back in time to various points in history to do magical good deeds. In this particular book they were visiting Charles Dickens. While Jack and Annie--who is disguised as a boy--are working as chimney sweeps, they are unable to catch a ride because of their dirty clothes. My six year old stopped after this event and said very clearly, "Mom, it seems like white skinned boys get everything they want." I was unsure how to continue, so I said, "What makes you say that?" Jacob proceeded to refer back to several other Magic Tree House books. "Well, when they visited Louis Armstrong in New Orleans, they had to ride on the back of the bus with him because he was dark skinned. And then when they went to Ireland in olden times, Annie wasn't allowed to do things because she was a girl, not a boy. And now even when Annie is dressed like a boy, but she looks poor because of her dirty clothes, no one will give them a ride. They only get what they need when they are clean white skinned boys. I stared for a minute with my mouth opened wide. "What do you think about that? "Well, Miss Barbie at school teaches us about tolerance and how things weren't always fair. And this isn't fair. What about if you had medium skin, or were different in another way? It's not OK that just being a white skinned boy means you get to do things easily and have what you want. You know Mom, it's like that in a lot of books...."And he began to tell me more about books he had read in school where the main characters were only boys. And how there should be more medium and dark skinned kids in books and how there are no dark skinned girls in books and how that's not fair, etc. It went on and on. I tell you this story, not to brag about my own child, but to share a snapshot of the immeasurable value of what our schools are doing. He did not get this from me. He got this from the brilliant work of guidance counselors, teachers, teaching assistants, and support staff. Sure, they are teaching the standards in science, math, social studies, and reading. This kindergartener used three separate texts to support the issue of white