Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Fargo’s new tax, and the purported fifty new police officers it will bring to Sacramento, aren’t going to magically produce those adults, any more than us spending our spare time surfing the sports scores, shopping online, and watching the Dow crash are going to make our communities more safer.

You care about our community, right? Get off your duff people! I can hear you now, “I don’t have time.”  If you don’t have spare time, maybe you’re doing better than a lot folks right now and you have some spare change? Better than handing it over to a burglar  right? These ten organizations will gladly put you and/or your spare change to work immediately, no questions asked:

Boys and Girls Club of Sacramento- Serving 6500 youth from ages 6 to 19 from all over Sacramento. They know what they’re doing and they do it well. You can volunteer with kids, teach classes, help with fundraising and auction materials and more.

Stanford Settlement- Right in our own backyard! Stanford Settlement is dangerously close to missing their budget required to stay open. Save a few lattes and help out the kids. They work hard to promote positive relationships for teens, give them a safe place to “hang out” and also provide emergency assistance, senior support and more.

Sacramento Children’s Home- Looking to meet a special child one on one and change the world one life at a time? This is it! Kids at the children’s home are lacking serious adult role models who can show them a way out of the horrid things they’ve seen. If that’s too personal, look at the wish list and buy something or volunteer for a special event.

Project Birthday- A one-time or repeat feel good warm fuzzy here! Throw a birthday party for a homeless child or a whole group! For $400 you can sponsor an entire party for 30 kids or you can donate supplies left from your kid’s last party.

Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services- Not just a food bank, SFBS provides famiy support, mother-baby classes, parenting classes, computer classes, clothing and supplies and much more. With over 800 volunteers, you know they’ll put you to work and value your committment. Can’t do it? Organize a Run to Feed the Hungry team from your neighborhood.

Natomas HOSTS program- Work with an individual student and make school matter! If you can lift them up in the classroom, they can succeed in life.

Hands On Sacramento- So it’s Friday and you have a few hours free tomorrow with no plans. What should you do? Visit this website and see who needs you right now for a few hours! Projects are short or long term and easily searchable by neighborhood, time and skills. If they don’t have something that fits your schedule, try Volunteer Match.

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)- What happens when kids are caught in the middle? CASA steps in to find out what’s best for the child. You can be the first adult a child has ever experienced a positive relationship with. CASA provides the training, the materials and the support and you provide the loving heart to help.

Big Brothers Big Sisters- If you have a driver’s license, insured transportation and a big heart, you can be a big brother or big sister! Be the adult to hold an at-risk child accountable and you’ll see the rewards multiply.

Your child’s school- If none of these seem to make you excited, walk into your child’s school next week and talk to the secretary. Tell her that you have some time and ask what you can do to help. I guarantee she’ll put you to work or find someone who will.

No more excuses. No more whining. Get to work!

Ed note: I am in contact with the City of Sacramento’sYouth Development Director, Lyn Corbett. Lyn is committed to Natomas outreach. He is looking for people in NAtomas to assist with youth initiatives. Holler at him here: lcorbett@cityofsacramento.org.  And Thank you TRACY!

Thanks to Joe’s recent post, I’ve been mulling my former teaching career and the idea of what keeps kids in school anyway? I won’t rehash the statistics but essentially, Natomas Unified is failing to keep kids in school. Why is that and what can we do to make it better?

I stumbled across an old Dept of Ed article called “Manual to Combat Truancy.” This line in particular jumped out at me “I’ve never seen a gang member who wasn’t a truant first,” says California District Attorney Kim Menninger. Based on the crime stats in Natomas and ongoing problems as the economy sinks around the nation, we’re obviously not doing enough to keep kids in school. The article has a few ideas of programs that have worked but none seem to focus on the real problem at hand: Why should kids care about staying in school?

The answer is simple to adults and complex to kids. If you have only seen your family treated poorly, suffered hunger, gone to school in clothes that were dirty, walked miles because you can’t afford a bus pass, then you have low expectations. While working at an alternative school, I had a student who traded sexual favors for food from a neighbor. It was the only way to feed her 4 year old brother who was often left in her care for days or weeks on end. She came to school every day because it was the only bright light in her horrid life. This happens every day to kids right in our own neighborhood.

But those kids are a mere fraction of the statistics represented in Joe’s report. The rest are simply kids that got left behind. I’ve seen undiagnosed learning disabilities that were so severe that kids in high school were still functioning at a 4th grade level. They worked so hard, for so little. I’ve seen others who had to work at night to help pay rent, others who failed year after year but got passed on anyway. I’ve seen gangsta kids who thought the streets had a better life with more money available to them. Do you know where I saw them all? SCHOOL.

And here’s the simple answer. What keeps kids in school? Having an adult they trust who they believe cares about them. It’s that simple. It can be a parent, teacher, family friend, pastor, principal, school counselor, even school safety officer. But they have to feel accountable to someone and feel like they matter. Will someone know if they don’t show up at school? Will someone call their house and track them down? If not, one easy day turns into 100 then a failed exit exam then jail. It really is that simple.

You can throw money at the problem all day long but essentially, it boils down to time. I was lucky to be a teacher in two schools that encouraged me to give my heart and soul to my class and to take time. Miss a staff lunch because someone is crying in your classroom? No big deal. Want to plan a life-changing field trip with no money? We’ll make it happen. Too many teachers are hog-tied by regulations, restrictions, low-esteem and the “no way it’ll work” administration. Why do so many new teachers leave in the first five years? Because too many people tell them they can’t change the world.

Second to that, schools need to have freedom to design a system that works for their students. Since Brown vs. Board of Education, a vastly different population of students has entered a system that was designed for wealthy white boys in the 1800s. The system hasn’t changed to meet the needs of the students. Why do charter schools work? Because they are individualized to what a small group of students need. Our system needs to be more diverse, more understanding and more broadly defined, not less. If your student needs online school, homeschool, big classes, single-sex classes, alternative schedules, block schedules, gifted acceleration, remedial tutoring,- you should be easily able to find it within your school district.

With enough parental pressure, Natomas Unified and every district in the state could easily meet these needs. If only the administration would stop saying “No.”

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Ed notes:

Check out a Michigan county’s Truancy Intervention program:

“Truancy is not viewed as just a school problem any more. Many students with attendance concerns come from at-risk families. When students enroll in school they bring all of their problems with them. The truancy coordinator works with school staff, students, parents, law enforcement, prosecutor’s office, family court and district court, and prevention service agencies to insure that long term solutions are in place to assist students and families. Because of truancy intervention school attendance is up, daytime crime is down, court referrals have decreased, and students and parents are held accountable for their actions.”

Check out this truancy program in Texas

“A major problem that many schools districts encounter are high truancy rates. Absent Student Assistance Program (A.S.A.P)  is a program that started with volunteer deputies visiting the homes of absent students. ”

Stop telling us what can NOT be done, and start telling us what CAN be done! This city has low expectations of itself because of our bureaucratic, same as it ever was leadership. Time to step it up Sacramento!