Perhaps you have seen the ad for Community In Schools. It aired over and over in the media. If you have not watched it, click the video to watch it on You Tube above. This article will take a look at this commercial and consider the implications of whats being said to shape your views of Community in Schools, because their goal is to get you to embrace the notion that school books, teachers, and family is not enough; we need to let big bushiness and corporations into our schools.
"My grades were bad, I would like, get, like D's and C's..."
Message here is that if you're average, (getting "c"s) you are a "looser."
(Why didn't this boy tell he he was getting D's and "F's?")
(Why didn't this boy tell he he was getting D's and "F's?")
"It just, it got worse and worse and worse throughout the years....and it was just rough focusing on school when your mother who acts like a child is somebody you have to take care of."
Note, the girl does not say, it was "rough for me" or say,
"my mom," acted like a child and I felt like I had to take care of her.
The choice of words, whether her own or scripted for the commercial,
alludes the personal side of this girls issue.
What is the message here?
"I appeared to be doing good at my school life, but if you would see me at home, it would have been a completely different story.""my mom," acted like a child and I felt like I had to take care of her.
The choice of words, whether her own or scripted for the commercial,
alludes the personal side of this girls issue.
What is the message here?
Here we see, school is good, home is bad.
"If something was going on at home we would go to stop by at Ms. Liberty's office and talk to her."
Parents are not as trustworthy as school teachers and counselors.
"They can trust someone and it can be the first person they ever trusted in their lives."
Evidently, they have never trusted anyone
in their lives before their teacher.
I feel very empowered to make positive choices for my students"
"I hear people say that we can't save every kid, but I think that we can."
The mission is to "save" every kid....
Do they really mean "every kid?" And from what are these kids being "saved?"
It almost sounds religious.
Which is it? Epidemics, medically speaking, are extremely dangerous to health and usually something out of control. but, have no fear, help is here and they want to sell it to you via television advertising. Their product, and the way to stop the epidemic, is "Community in Schools."
Wikipedia says, "The Communities In Schools (CIS) network is a federation of independent, 501 C organizations in 27 states and the District of Columbia that work to address the dropout epidemic. The organization identifies and mobilizes existing community resources and fosters cooperative partnerships for the benefit of students and their families." Wow. It's not your usual Parent Teacher Organization.
When you go to their website, the first thing you get to see is a request for a donation... or two, leading you to see it as a charity.Sure, CIS is a tax exempt 501 3c organization, but it is a work force, offering jobs, complete with salaries for individuals who oversee and operate these programs in the schools nationwide.... if the schools will have them. Any organization that can get its foot into the door of school can work both inside the school and outside, and lets remember, children and their growing minds and bodies are a very valuable natural resource. Like trees in a forest or gold in a river, your kids are a harvest waiting to happen. for this reason, and likely many others, businesses, corporations and various services, both public and private, are more than happy to have a presence in your local school, especially if funding, or serious tax write offs, will be available to have it happen.
Here is a listing of organizations that currently advertise themselves as funders of CIS..Funders include, AT&T, Bank of America, LUCKY brand and American Express. Funny how people want too have their business logos all over this not for profit ...charitable... organization. Also note, one of the top 100 Non Profit Charitable Organization, is Communities In Schools,
Looking deeper, it's pretty easy to see, this organization is not just here to help out a few students, but really to involve everyone. They say the want to free up teacher to teach, but really the goal is to change the way school is done, I'd even go so far as to speculate that the point is to create something known as Full-service Community Schools, all under the pretense of keeping people from dropping out of school. I say pretense because, since the prestigeous not for profit organization, Communities in Schools, is run by an ex high school drop out, Bill Milliken.
This only goes to prove that dropping out of public school is not the end of the world. If you remember, some people who would have easily been negatively labeled by the "experts" in position of educational authority as "drop outs", like Albert Einstein and Aretha Franklin, for example, have silenced the people who told them that they'd "never amount to much" because they didn't do well in school environments for whatever reason. In fact, some "drop outs", Like Bill Milliken, have been very successful. So successful in fact that his agenda is pretty big.
Says Bill Milliken:
"We need to stop thinking of ourselves as just K-12. We need to at least be the next grade up. We need to capture the field, be the leader and not turn inward. I keep hearing “oh we have so much competition out there.” If we see that as competition and not an opportunity, then we will become isolated and shrink. We need to see that as a field to capture so that we are all going in the same direction to turn around every kids life in every school." - Bill Milliken, 40 years Later Interview
and
" Career preparedness starts at birth. " - Bill Milliken, 40 years Later Interview
So, you can see, it's not REALLY just the at-risk for drop-out kids he has site on. And he says it's not just about K-12 too. No, he has a goal. Since he mentions birth here, you just have to wonder... Maybe Ccommunity in Schools , wants your babies too?
CIS propaganda include comments like:
"Life's hurdles can only be cleared with the support of a strong community."
"Communities in Schools" advertisement by RMDA advertising
"At Communities in Schools we wants every child to have a shot at a better life."
Communities in Schools advertisement
"I hear people say that we can't save every kid, but I think that we can."
Ms. Liberty, Communities in Schools Advertisement
Bill Milliken tells us what it is and you might not believe this, but the he says the problem is not in the arena of education.
"Well....I came to the conclusion that the young people weren't dropping out of school because of education, they were breaking down.. ah ... because of a breakdown in community. You know... there was no safety net for them.... and I felt that schools now were being asked to be mother, father, sister, brother, social worker, hall guard. I said here we have all these people all over town working with young people, why don't we bring them together in a collaboration around the schools where every body's bringing their gift there, to free up the teachers to teach and give safe places for our young people to learn... and so, the average school is open from 8:30 til 3, the average agency working with children is open from 9 to 5, that left from three to five to build relationships with kids that were on buses. So, we said, why don't all get the people from the health, education, faith community, volunteers to all come together and work together as a community, and that's why it's called, Communities In Schools."
Bill Milliken (Communities in Schools) - Interviewed by Sam Beard
"We are assessing the needs of every child but we are also assessing their strengths, and that the key! Its really about understanding what kids are great at."
Mollie Shaw
Executive Director of a CIS program
Monica Koechlein
President of the philanthropic Stamm Koechlein Family Foundation
Michael F. Rice
Superintendent of Kalamazoo Public Schools
Bonnie Adams Knapp of the New Morning Foundation.
Bonnie Adams Knapp of the New Morning Foundation.
"We now are really proud that Communities In Schools has gotten pregnancies down to one or two a year."
Bonnie Adams Knapp of the New Morning Foundation.
"We can bring all these services to the community, but if they don't buy into them, or believe in them they are not going to take advantage of them."
Dana Millet -Public Health Director
Amanda Fox, Student Support Specialist CIS
.
".... and parents need to know that they are not in it alone, that there are people in the community to help them raise their kids."
Leah Livingston-Site Coordinator
History of Community in Schools Link
Community in Schools Spokane Main page Link
Partners in the Spokane Area Program
