How many people laid off in a given industry band together their best and brightest to open a similar business and become entrepreneurs? Six unemployed Roseville teachers and a newly retired administrator who returned to the work force joined together and teamed up to start their own private nonprofit school that includes all grades from elementary through high school levels.
You may want to check out the January 15, 2013 news article by Diana Lambert, "Laid-off teachers launch a private nonprofit school in Roseville." The six teachers, had been laid off from their jobs in education recently when the Horizon Charter schools closed one of its programs and shuttered a school. Instead of running to the unemployment office in a knee-jerk reaction or filling in at menial wage jobs after having all that excellent teaching experience and costly education to become credentialed teachers and educational administrators, the six laid-off teachers decided to open the Hawthorne Academy in the former Roseville Community Hospital site at 333 Sunrise Blvd., in Roseville. The school is scheduled to open in August 2013.
Janel Catalano will be the vice principal and a teacher. The group tapped one teacher's mother – Pat Teilh – to be principal, according to the Sacramento Bee article. She previously had retired as principal of Rocklin Academy Charter Schools four years ago.
Teachers and administrators came from schools that consistently had some of the highest Academic Performance Index scores in the region.
The teachers can't make use of federal or state funding because the school is private – are taking out loans and using their savings to open the school. As far as salary, the Sacramento Bee article mentions their salary and policy on future raises. Check out the article.
The big picture is that the teachers have to fill the seats with children in the new school. They do have a budget that covers each item needed, including the used furniture. Check out the Sacramento Bee article to see what the tuition for the children will be, including sibling discounts.
Only a few students per class in the new school
The six teachers started a small school, where each grade level has just one class or only a few students per class. The staff besides the teachers will be the principal, office manger, and part-time vice principal. For starters, the school will begin with kindergarten through 8th grade and only later (over time) expand through the high school years, 9th to 12th grade.
Teaching methods include Horizon's Core Knowledge Curriculum so that the students can use an accelerated learning program with project-based instruction. Students learn to work work with committees and groups like they will be doing in a real-world job. As far as languages, students will have Spanish language learning classes daily and all-day enrichment classes on Fridays.
That way you have a student graduating with real-world skills, being able to deal with people from all walks of life who may be an English learner, and the student will be able to talk to others in Spanish or English and be able to help a wider range of people than if they only learned one language.
Some new teachers will be hired
If enough students enroll in the classes, two or three new teachers will be hired, according to the Sacramento Bee article. Students who apply to enroll in the school need to be interviewed about their previous experiences. Those accepted as students should be interested in learning and asking questions.
The school will share the campus with Roseville Gateway Center of Sierra College and some other offices. It will be self-contained, separated by fencing and gates, and will have security, according to the Sacramento Bee article. Hawthorne Academy will fill the space on the campus formerly occupied by a culinary academy. That means, according to the Sacramento Bee article, that a hot lunch will be available, assuming the former culinary academy left some of its cooking appliances.
Parental generosity tied to lower student grades
Check out the January 15, 2013 Sacramento Bee article reprinted from the New York Times , "Study: Parental generosity tied to lower student grades." Apparently, the more college money parents pay for their children's college tuition, the lower their children's college grades are, according to a new national study.
Check out the study, "Laura Hamilton | Research - Parental Investments in Youth. Also see, "More Is More or More Is Less? Parent Financial Investments During College," by Laura Hamilton, a University of California, Merced, sociology professor, found greater parental contributions linked with lower grades across all kinds of four-year institutions. She suggested that students who get a blank parental check may not take their education as seriously as others. See, Parents' Financial Support Linked to College Grades - NYTimes.com.
Class reproduction identified
Sociologists research whether parental resources and practices are key mechanisms driving class reproduction that reveal how the educational and occupational standings of parents are largely reproduced by their children.
The new research from Laura Hamilton adds to this rich tradition of research by elucidating some often implicit, but little investigated ways that family background and structure advantage or disadvantage youth. Check out her dissertation, Strategies for Success: Parental Funding, College Achievement, and the Transition to Adulthood. The dissertation examines a costly parental investments, the funding of a college education. Check out the site, Strategies for success: Parental funding, college - Umi.com.
The American Educational Research Association supported the project with a Dissertation Grant. Current research suggests that parental financial support helps get students to college. But sociologists wanted to know more about how, why, and to what end parents choose to use their resources during education coming after high-school graduation. The study used various datasets, both quantitative and qualitative, to investigate these questions. Also see the American Sociological Review.
Research showed that whereas parental aid decreases student GPA, it increases the odds of graduating. The study also found that students with parental funding often perform well enough to stay in school, but dial down their academic efforts. The conclusion of the study highlights the importance of social context for parental investment and discusses implications for public policy. You may also want to check out a second paper, "Building Feminine Selves: Horizontal Inequities in Higher Education."
Are adoptive parents adaptive parents when it comes to spending money to cover children's college costs?
Also check out the study, "Adoptive Parents, Adaptive Parents: Evaluating the Importance of Biological Ties for Parental Investment," (American Sociological Review 2007). Researchers found that contrary to contemporary legal and scholarly debate, the non-biological parents of adoptive children invest as much, if not more, than biological parents do in their children. The conclusions suggest that alternative family forms once thought to disadvantage youth may, in some ways, even act as an advantage.
The moral of this feature is to show that there are alternative ways and various possibilities to solve problems whether it be about banding together with other people out of work to open a similar business, such as the six teachers did, or checking out if you're a parent, whether your child will get higher grades if the child has to earn the money that pays for college education.
The exception would be medical school loans, where someone determined with a 'calling' for a specific profession in need with a known shortage would be able to find the opportunity to go to school regardless of how low the parent's income is, as long as the student is dedicating to learning the occupation of choice, and that there's a need for the student's educational goal and the student has the ability to pass the courses and national licensing exams for the specific occupation.
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