Return to school brings reminder of our responsibility

By Alonzo Weston

I woke up Wednesday morning to the sounds of cars, buses and children’s laughter. It was the first day of school in St. Joseph.

We live across the street from a public school with all the playground sounds and parking problems that go along with it. My wife and I know that at times early in the morning and later in the afternoon parking will be scarce because of parents dropping off and picking up their kids.

Despite the parking chaos and lost school papers littering my lawn, I still enjoy having school in session. I love sitting on my front porch with a cup of coffee and hearing and watching the kids play on the playground. It’s therapeutic.

I understand there’s still a lot of mistrust for our public schools after the 2015 stipend fiasco that sent former superintendent Dan Colgan to prison. I covered the school district as a reporter for the St. Joseph News-Press during that time. Before then I was a basketball coach and mentor at the former Neely Elementary School.

I saw many dedicated teachers doing the best job they could to educate our children. I saw staff buy cleaning supplies and student lunches and even foster parent needy kids all on a measly teacher’s salary.

You can be mad at the district all you want for past indiscretions but these teachers take care of our children and educate them on limited resources.

The Kansas City Chiefs come to town for training camp and we hoo and hah for these millionaires when the real heroes are in our classrooms.

These teachers have to not only deal with unruly kids but also derelict parents who don’t do their jobs at home raising their kids.

In the past, if a kid got in trouble in school the parents backed the teacher and reprimanded their child. Today the teacher is the enemy and our baby can do no wrong even if he or she is a holy terror in class.

Then there is the subject of book bans in school. Books are the main tools of education whether we like a certain tome or not.

When we want to ban Mark Twain or J.D. Salinger we’re depriving our kids of a sound and supportive education. The world isn’t or has never been all peaches and cream and “Huck Finn” and “Catcher in the Rye” are books to better to help our kids better understand our world and their own lives.

Let’s make our schools better by supporting our teachers and our books. Our kids need them both.