Walton School...

So I had one of the most eye opening experiences I have had in a long time.  To quote the great Dante Hicks from Clerks..."I not even supposed to be here today!"  True, it wasn't my gig today.  I had the honor to sit in teaching a class of 4th graders today at Walton with my coworkers because of schedule conflicts with my boss.  He couldn't swing it so he sent me and my boy Rob in there to cover.  Before heading over to the school in the morning for our class assignment my boss Tim and us 2 Junior Achievement teachers in training headed over to Sam's club.  We picked up a big 88 color pen set, some mechanical pencils and Laffy Taffy.  I brought like a package of Post-It notes to add to the till that I had bought weeks back and never really used.  When I gave them to our 4th grade Teacher you would have thought we gave her gold.

Here's the thing kids, you hear about how the Cleveland schools are in bad shape but you don't really understand what that means until you see it first hand.  Walton school is a very small K-8 elementary school located on Cleveland's west side.  It sits back in the Ohio City area a stones throw from some of the places I frequent.  There were quite a few volunteers from work who took place in a blitz.  Our mission was to teach the kids from K-8 a little bit about banking, finance, goods and services and a little of everything in between.  We all met up in the tiny library in the middle of the school.  Immediately I noticed the lack of books, let alone the lack of shelves for books.  They were even using milk crates to house some books.  The books they did have showed a lot of wear.  I remember my elementary school library having so many books I wouldn't even begin to be able to read them all.  That being said I did go to a private school in Bay Village as a kid.  So I was afforded certain luxuries on that front.  I remember Curious George and Frog and Toad and everything in between.  I don't know if these kids even know who or what Huck Finn is.  

When we arrived in our classroom we were escorted to our class room by one of our kids in the class.  The roundabout way we had to take to get to our classroom was odd in itself.  First off we had to walk around outside the building.  Secondly we had to cut through other classes just to get our class room.  It was strange to say the least.  While walking to the class we passed by the courtyard which is fenced off on all sides with a big metal security gate that separates the school from the general public.  The playground is located in the parking lot area.  It was ok but not anything special at all.  A crappy playground to anyone that has a soul is a pretty sad thing.  These metal and wooden monsters remind us of our childhoods where we would run around, play games, slide, swing, laugh and play.  This one didn't do much for me.  It was more of an afterthought stuck off to the side of the building in the parking lot.  A lonely playground is probably one of the saddest sights in the world, but you just need to make due with what you have to work with I guess.

The classroom itself is pretty small.  The one I was in wasn't overcrowded or anything.  There were 15 or 16 adorable kids in my 4th grade classroom.  They were respectful and willing to listen and learn our 3 hour class on natural resources.  Our teacher was very nice and very gracious.  She had very good control over the kids when they started to get a little restless.  She was very helpful for two guys who basically were more than a little under prepared.  There was also a translator in our class because many of the children knew English as a second language.  So there is that language barrier there that makes their learning experience that much more difficult.  Classroom supplies?  What supplies is more like it.  The maps that used to roll down like a 50's window shade in the classrooms I grew up in are regulated to a solo map of the state of Ohio.  

So it's not a lack of good teachers, or kids willing to learn.  It is a severe lack of funding for the most basic of supplies.  Don't get me wrong I know there are bad apples, thugs and your ordinary average asshole bully type but at the same time you got to have a chance to make it.  I am sure there are also the teachers out there that could care less too.  I think these are the exception and not the rule.  In order to really reach them you need more than outdated books and classrooms so minimal that learning at all period is a challenge.  It's not like a lot of these kids can go online and look stuff up.  It's doubtful many of them even have computers.  It's the dark side of Cleveland that we know about, we talk about, we bitch about, then shrug our shoulders and say fuck it nothing I can do.  It's broken.  My kids don't go there, not my problem.  It's part of the problem we have in Cleveland but what exactly is the solution?

The easy answer is more funding however from who?  From the parents that have limited income?  From the city who has been dropping the ball for the better part of 20 years now?  The funds need to come from the community.  Now the issue with that is if you know the area at all they really don't have the money.  Many families struggle to make ends meet.  This has been proven through the rampant foreclosures in the area, the boarded up businesses, warehouses and factories.  Look just in the immediate area of what used to be the Clothcraft Building.  It was sold to a developer with the intent of lavish condos and townhouse city living.  The start of it can still be seen off 90 right near the Clothcraft building; a row of brand spanking new town homes already boarded up because the builder went bankrupt and the city just allowed it to happen.

The city officials of Cleveland, the city I love, allow absolute bullshit loopholes and things like this just happen.  To get business in the city, to get the developers in to build and take on projects they offer a tax abatement.  We need that tax revenue to fund education in Cleveland.  It's like this grand illusion of commerce and growth.  Look at the Cleveland Flats.  Here is perfect example of a builder being allowed to more or less bulldoze a hub of Cleveland entertainment with the promise of fine dining, and luxury high rises that now resembles a Scooby Doo wasteland.  There is no accountability to these big corporations when the funding doesn't pan out quite the way they wanted it to.  So the business is lured in with promises of tax free sweetheart deals and the people who need the money the most, like the Cleveland Public Schools, get fucked.  

I think a tax abatement for housing in Cleveland is a good thing, but for business it is abused and it shows.  The Mayor, the County Commissioner among others allow this to happen.  We have so much corruption in Cleveland politics there are all kinds of investigations going on.  Yet, we the voters and tax payers keep voting these scumbags back in year after year.  I have serious doubts that this Medical Mart will ever happen.  I have visions of the Music Man coming to town scamming and fleecing us all with pipe dreams of something that is just too good to be true.  I think the 3 stooges involved in this are on the take and just continue blowing smoke up our ass until it finally breaks ground in another city.  

Pheewwwww...ok off that soapbox.  What to do about the schools?  I still don't know.  Let's adopt a classroom.  Let's adopt a school.  Hold a rally, a concert, or a benefit and donate your kids old books and just the basic school supplies so these kids can have something better.  So they can look at a map of the United States like we used to as kids and pick out the states so they can identify where Nebraska is.  A pack of 88 colored markers almost brought tears to the eyes of a teacher I met today, and I don't feel right about that at all.  Would we send police into a shootout without guns?  Would we send the firefighters to a blazing inferno with garden hoses and spray bottles?  Of course not because they need those things in order to survive.  Yet we send our teachers into a battle against literacy, competence, math and science with the bare minimum.  If this isn't ok with you tell me what you are going to do about it?  

I'm one person, yet one person with a big old fucking megaphone right now.  I have limited street cred at this point but maybe someone is listening in the area.  Maybe a bar owner out there or a band is saying I would get behind something like this, this is my community, I can change things and I can make things happen.  Well what's stopping you?  Host a benefit and set up a benefit show.  Donate a certain amount of profits right back into the school in your backyard that needs help desperately.  Can you imagine the impact if for one night in Cleveland every music venue around town said yep it's time to give back a little more to my community.  I believe what this crazy 52 Weeks of Cleveland guy is saying.  I can do something and I will do something.  Charge $5.00 at the door or a donation item that anyone can pick up at Office Max to give these kids a little better than a slim chance at making it to college.  It could work and trust me when I say it would make a difference.  To you teachers out there in the meantime I say one thing...Thank you.