Readers respond: Students need layoff facts

Regarding the column by Anne Michaud, "Keep school budget talk out of the classroom" [Opinion, Dec. 8], I agree that children need to feel secure in school. Their focus needs to be on learning. A major part of that learning should, in my opinion, be relating knowledge to reality. What good are the three Rs if we don't see the issues that are facing us daily?

We live in a society that has a small percentage of people voting in general and school elections. This lack of response leads to lack of control over the direction our country takes and sometimes even to corruption in government.

It is imperative that our children learn to be good citizens and participate in our democracy. If this means bringing up budget concerns to students old enough to understand, then they should be mentioned. An open discussion talking about the whole process and not focusing just on layoffs, would be in order. This hopefully would bring students to begin thinking about mundane issues that our society faces on a daily basis. Opening their young minds would undoubtedly lead to a more involved electorate later on.

Steve Tuck, Huntington

If a teacher is asked a question by a student, shouldn't it be answered? I find it amusing that a person who contributes to Newsday's Opinion pages wants to now control the things we say in class. Newspaper columnists get their forum without any input from readers.

I find all the harsh rhetoric printed in the last several years about teachers "divisive, angry and unhealthy" as well. When class sizes are larger and programs are cut, remember the true culprits: the financial institutions and oil companies whose employees and owners still get record bonuses each year -- on average, more than teachers make in a year.

Rich Weeks, Middle Island

I believe that Anne Michaud completely missed the point. School budget talks allow Social Studies teachers to discuss relevant and current issues facing our communities. This issue lends itself to great discussions of limited resources, the role of the citizen in a democracy, economic choices and a whole host of other topics. This is what we call a teachable moment.

We do our students a great disservice when we try to shelter them from what is happening in the news.

Kathleen Stanley, Massapequa Park Editor's note: The writer is a high school Social Studies teacher.

As a teacher in a public high school, I feel that I need to explain why teachers sometimes discuss rules governing teacher layoffs (last in, first out) with their students. A lot of students don't understand the difference between being laid off and being fired. They just assume that when someone is excessed because of budgetary reasons, that person has been fired for cause.

I feel it is important to explain to students how tenure and seniority work. It's bad enough when colleagues are let go. I'm certainly not going to let their reputations be tarnished with misinformation.

The column is right in this sense, that younger children should not be frightened by teachers into thinking Mom and Dad hold the key to a teacher's survival, and children should therefore convince their parents to vote for the budget. It's a cheap ploy.

However, I also think that when students come to school and tell me their parents say I make too much money and have it really easy, that I should be allowed to defend my profession. I don't think it's inappropriate to discuss the realities with older students, some of whom will be able to participate in the upcoming budget votes.

Jeffrey A. Stotsky, Forest Hills

Keep school budget talk out of the classroom

Recently, I was driving my seventh-grader to one of her many events, when she began explaining LIFO to me. She told me that the youngest teachers were usually the ones to lose their jobs when there are budget cuts: "last in, first out."

I don't consider this information a seventh-grader should be thinking about - except perhaps when learning labor history in the classroom. She said that her teachers, and others, have been talking about the politics of school budgets.

It may seem a little soon, given that budgets won't be up for a public vote until May. But people are thinking ahead since this time around will be different. New York schools will be budgeting to stay under the 2 percent property tax cap passed earlier this year.

This week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo negotiated a deal to restructure state income tax rates so that New York will be able to afford a promised 4 percent increase in state aid to schools next year. I hope that deal takes some of the tension out of the classroom, because I don't think school budget cuts are a proper topic for students.

I first heard such concerns from my daughter when she was in fourth grade and came home to report that her teacher might lose her job if the school budget didn't pass. The message to parents was that we should get out and vote "yes." It was the emotional equivalent of dangling a baby over a banister.

I sent an email to another teacher, who was the supervisor of my daughter's program, and said I didn't think they should be talking in class about teacher layoffs. First, it's scary for kids to think that the teacher could suddenly be gone. There's an emotional attachment between student and teacher.

It's also frightening for kids to contemplate how their teacher might be harmed by job loss. Last, it's unfair to imply that Mommy and Daddy hold the only key - the ballot box - to saving Teacher's job.

Could it be that if the school board had negotiated a more modest teachers contract that it could afford to pay more teachers year after year? Of course. Could it be that if administrators found savings - like condsolidating their ranks or settling for less luxurious compensation packages - that the system could afford to lay off fewer teachers? Right again.

But I didn't say that when I emailed my daughter's school. I simply said that I felt the financial conversation was best kept among adults, and that students might be frightened by layoff talk.

When teachers raise district budget issues in class, it feels like divorcing parents who are pointing blaming fingers at each other. It's divisive, angry and unhealthy. I feel the same way about teachers refusing to stay for after-school help or wearing black to school to protest that they're working without a contract. These "conversations" should occur among adults. Kids should be able to focus on adaptive immunity and rational integers and the branches of government without being distracted by budget politics.

Teachers surely want to be treated like professionals - and I've met far, far more good teachers than the occasional inconsiderate one. But a few loose comments - such as how my daughter learned about LIFO - can poison the atmosphere.

With the tax cap in effect, the conversation about how to pay for public education is going to become tenser in coming years. We can figure it out, but let's do it in a room where only the grown-ups are allowed.

First published in Newsday.

Time for a 'living wage' for the middle class?

With millions out of work, complaints about the decline in middle-class wages may seem misplaced. But without some shoring up, the middle class will remain dispirited -- and our economy, which is 70 percent dependent on consumer spending, will remain in the dumper.

It may be that there's a role for government to play in buttressing these eroding wages, which result not only in a declining standard of living, but also in a family life so pressure-filled that it leads to its own problems: angry homes, fast-food diets, dependence on alcohol and drugs.

Calling for any sort of government role during these tea party times can raise charges of socialism. But the idea of a wage that supports some minimum standard of living -- shelter, clothing, food -- has been broached on and off for more than a century.

In the late 1800s, social activists began protesting wages earned by a working-class man that were not sufficient to sustain his family, without the additional wages of working children and mothers. The Catholic Church published a fundamental social teaching, "Rerum Novarum" (on capital and labor), that read, "Wealthy owners of the means of production and employers must never forget that both divine and human law forbid them to squeeze the poor and wretched for the sake of gain or to profit from the helplessness of others."

Shortly afterward, Australia's courts ruled that an employer must pay a wage that guaranteed a standard of living that was reasonable for "a human being in a civilized community" for a family of four to live in "frugal comfort."

In the United States, these ideas led to laws forbidding child labor, making education compulsory and protecting women from exploitive labor conditions. The campaign to establish a "family wage" was defeated, but in 1938, a lower standard, the federal minimum wage, was passed.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Patrick Moynihan and in 1968, a group of 1,200 economists including Paul Samuelson and John Kenneth Galbraith, have all supported some kind of minium income guarantee.

Echoes of this debate are being heard now, in the Vatican's critique last week of the global financial system, and in places where labor unions still have some sway: In the New York City Council, which at the urging of retail workers may require employers in commercial developments built with public subsidies to pay at least $10 an hour, a "living wage" higher than the minimum wage of $7.25; and in Albany, where the State Legislature in April passed an increase to $9 an hour for home health aides, who are represented by the influential 1199 SEIU United Health Care Workers East. That increase takes effect on Long Island in 2013.

It's easy to see why the lowest-paid workers would need a boost from someone powerful enough to argue on their behalf. But to make the argument for the middle class, one has to believe that this great swath of America, nearly half the country, has special value. And it does: The stability and upward mobility of the middle class not only underpin the U.S. economy but give America its famously optimistic and innovative spirit.

That spirit is on display as the middle class makes the best of things today: The average American has added around a month's worth of work, 164 hours per year, in the last two decades. One-third of American families have reduced their savings for college, according to a 2010 Sallie Mae/Gallup poll, and another 15 percent are not saving at all. Retirement savings are in similar decline.

How much more can the middle class cinch in its belt, before we lose what's precious about this way of life?

First published in Newsday.

Bullets are wrong way out of a marriage

As the facts stand, it seems wrong to allow Barbara Sheehan to get away with killing her husband. Sheehan, 50, is the Howard Beach, Queens, woman who was just acquitted of murder by reason of self-defense, based on her claims of physical and psychological abuse by Sgt. Raymond Sheehan, a retired cop and her husband of 24 years.

She shot him 11 times on a February morning in 2008, leaving him dead in their bathroom, where he had been shaving. She got off 11 rounds -- and he? Zero. Considering the circumstances, this doesn't seem as much like a woman who fired in self-defense as someone who was shooting to kill.

And yet, a jury on Thursday found her not guilty of murder. It's troubling that, with as many social and legal supports as we've erected for abused partners in the past 40 years, Barbara Sheehan still felt she had to resort to killing to escape her marriage, no matter how nightmarish.

Up until the 1970s, domestic violence, and especially violence against women, was dismissed by the criminal justice system as "a family matter." Perpetrators were often not arrested or charged with crimes. Police gave a low priority to "domestic" calls.

But much has changed. Many states have enacted mandatory arrest laws for reports of violence. Some states have set up special courts and treatment programs for batterers. Victims can seek restraining orders and take refuge in clandestine emergency shelters. The U.S. Department of Justice created an Office on Violence Against Women in 1994, and estimates that this crime fell by more than 50 percent in the subsequent decade.

Sheehan testified that she feared her husband would kill her in one of his rages. He kept at least one gun with him at all times, had smashed her head into a cement wall, and had often held a gun to her head. She said he insinuated that his past as a police officer would make it difficult for her to report him and escape his orbit. She claimed that his threats had been growing more serious.

Sheehan told the court that on that final morning, Feb. 18, she took her husband's revolver and tried to sneak out of their home. But he allegedly confronted her with his 9-mm Glock pistol, which he had taken into the bathroom. She fired five shots from the revolver, retrieved his pistol, and then emptied that into his body too.

Acquitted of murder, Sheehan faces sentencing Nov. 10 on a conviction of gun possession, which could carry three to 15 years behind bars.

What she apparently did not do, before resorting to this lethal act, was call 9-1-1. During Sheehan's monthlong trial, she produced no record of reports to police. She didn't claim, as women often did when their customary role was housewife, that she couldn't afford to leave; she had a job, as a school secretary. Nor could she have been afraid of leaving her children behind: Their daughter and son were grown.

Granted, it may have been dangerous for Sheehan to inform to the police on one of their own. And domestic violence victims are said to enter a kind of mental paralysis and passivity after years of domination, humiliation and torture. Statistics argue that Sheehan had good reason to fear for her life; of those killed by an intimate partner each year, three-quarters are female.

The prosecution argued that she stayed in the marriage to collect her husband's life insurance money. But there should have been some half step she could have taken. Remaining passive in the face of abuse and then nailing someone with 11 bullets shouldn't have felt like her only option. Raymond Sheehan was probably a monster. But society has worked hard to ensure that battered women don't have to resort to violence, too.

First published in Newsday.

Economic trends threaten families' health

After listening to President Barack Obama's job-creation address last week, I kept coming back to the idea that he wants to give payroll tax breaks to businesses that offer people pay raises. That struck me as odd, given that unemployment stands at 9.1 percent, and you'd think that this hard-times president would be focused exclusively on getting people back to work.

But even people with jobs are facing time and money pressures in this economy, pressures that are bad for families' health.

Certainly, putting cash in people's pockets should help to rev up the listless consumer economy. But it looks like the president is also acknowledging just how much wages have eroded in the last couple of decades.

Real wages have been declining since 1983 and that means the middle class has less buying power. At the same time, the average American has added around a month's worth of work -- 164 hours per year -- in the past two decades. The number of dual-income households has risen, as well as the number of people working multiple jobs. It's not hard to imagine that people are putting in more time at work to make up for the erosion in their wages. That sounds like a very busy -- an overly busy -- middle class.

This busyness has consequences for the mental and physical health of parents and children -- and study after study substantiates this. A six-year study of 11,540 working parents in France, published in 2007, showed that people who had higher work stress or greater family demands were more likely to miss work due to poor mental health, particularly depression. Research on working parents in New York's Erie County demonstrated a relationship between family-work conflict and depression, heavy alcohol consumption, poor physical health and high blood pressure.

Time pressures also contribute to weight problems. For the first time in history, there are more overweight than underweight adults worldwide, according to new research at American University. A study published in the January-February issue of the journal Child Development found that children's body mass index rose the more years their mothers worked over their lifetimes. One explanation offered is that working parents have limited time for grocery shopping and food preparation.

Not so long ago, as a society we were asking, is it better for families if parents stay home with kids or work outside the home? Moms were usually the parents in question. Now, because of steadily declining purchasing power, for most people, it's less a matter of choice than necessity.

I have to ask myself, was this a conscious decision? Did Americans choose "working parents" as the better alternative? Was it a good direction or have we lost something in the translation? Have we perhaps given too little thought to how parents can give both their employers and their children what they need?

The financial and time pressures on families are what make us so vulnerable to implied criticisms, like those on display in Amy Chua's "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." It registered so strongly with American parents because we're insecure about having adequate resources to meet the challenges of raising children now.

It's too early to tell if the Obama tax break, if adopted, will be effective in raising people's wages, or even whether, if we made more money, we would choose to spend more time with our children. But it's worth trying to reverse some of the trends that are putting so much pressure on families' health.

First published in Newsday

Hurricane Irene: Life in the dark ages

One lesson from Hurricane Irene -- or make that, Irene, the tropical storm -- is that we have no moderation in our information flow. It's either all . . . or next to nothing.

For days, weather-watchers reported the direction and shifting wind speeds of the approaching hurricane. We couldn't look at a television, website, smartphone or tablet without a reminder to stock up on drinking water and fresh batteries. This constant nagging heightened the feelings of urgency -- especially for those of us who grew up in a relatively media-free age, when headlines waited patiently on the doorstep until we were ready to take them in.

The blanket storm coverage may have kicked up our anxiety a notch too high, especially since the hurricane slowed significantly before it hit New York. All those masking-taped shop windows afterward seemed overcautious.

But the frequent alerts also made many of us better prepared. My household had never so much as inventoried our flashlights. This time, our outdoor furniture was lashed tightly together with bungee cords, and we had a full propane tank for outdoor cooking -- which proved handy since we were among the hundreds of thousands of tristate homes that lost power.

The pre-warnings about Irene had another effect: They made the morning after seem unbearably quiet. Without electricity, there was no Internet telephone service, no website browsing ability. My family hadn't gotten to the store in time to buy batteries for the radio -- those Ds sold out quickly -- so we started up the truck in the driveway, eager for news. Had the storm passed? Were we in the calm eye and vulnerable to another blast?

It's impossible to imagine my parents' generation being caught without radio batteries.

By midday Sunday, people were emerging from their homes to look around at the wreckage. It was reassuring to be amongst each other. Snapped pine branches scented the air like Christmas.

Some shops were open, powered by noisy generators. Two of the Greek restaurants in Huntington Village had open doors, not to be outdone one by the other. Several caffeine addicts lounged mournfully on the steps of the darkened Starbucks. Neighbors sat on porches with books, turning actual pages and reading by daylight.

A second lesson of Irene is how dependent we are on electronics not only to inform, but also to entertain.

Back at home, still chipper about our power loss, my daughter set up a game of Clue. Afterward, we read until the light faded. I had a charming Jane Eyre moment, transported into the 19th century in my imagination as I carried a candle to the basement to feed the cats. Did Jane also scoop kitty litter by candlelight?

Our peaceful acceptance didn't last. My daughters quarreled over how to use the remaining charge in the laptop. Power up one iPod Touch? Play an audiobook they could both listen to?

As darkness closed in, the quiet was broken by a high-pitched whine. It stopped, then started again, several times. Annoyed, I asked my husband what he thought it was. He replied, "Crickets."

So, that's what's on the other side of the air-conditioners' hum.

Darkness fell before 8 p.m., but who goes to bed that early? We burned greedily through our last energy resources, playing solitaire on the iPad.

Monday morning, still without power, my husband shouldered his laptop and went in search of public places with Wi-Fi. I trust the Long Island Power Authority is hard at work.

First published in Newsday

High-quality child care is a good investment

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The United States is sitting on a vast, untapped economic development tool that has received too little notice: our children.

Investing in children before they enter school pays dividends, and yet child care subsidies are at risk as Congress mulls questions about how to reduce the federal deficit. Before you tune this out as the same old "it's for the kids" chorus, consider:

--Children in high-quality programs are more likely to be employed -- and paying taxes -- when they reach adulthood.

--Parents who receive child care subsidies are less likely to need other forms of public assistance. A 2006 report by the Department of Health and Human Services noted that the subsidies are associated with the largest increase in employment for people formerly on welfare.

--Children who receive high-quality care, either at home or outside, are ready to succeed in school, showing a reduced need for special education programs and increased graduation rates.

--Bad child care is more likely to produce juvenile criminals. A Chicago study showed that at-risk children not enrolled in early care and education programs were 70 percent more likely to be charged with a violent crime by age 18.

This last point prompted more than 600 police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors -- calling themselves Fight Crime: Invest in Kids -- to write to Congress this spring, urging continued funding for Child Care Development and Block Grants. The grants are the federal government's primary child care assistance to states.

Despite a sizable budget -- $19 billion in federal and state spending in 2008 -- child care subsidies have never kept up with the need. Only a fraction of eligible families received any subsidy that year, according to the Urban Institute; most were stuck on long waiting lists.

In February, Republicans in the House proposed cutting the child care block grants by $39 million. That didn't happen, but the funding is still at risk. In the name of deficit reduction, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) plan for 2012 would reduce spending to 2008 levels. Democrats say that would cause 170,000 families trying to find or keep jobs to lose child care.

To be sure, we must get federal spending under control. But it's fair to ask our leaders to responsibly weigh the value of programs they want to cut.

Child care costs are mind-boggling. A survey by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies found that, in every region of the United States, the average child care fees for an infant were higher than the average amount that families spend on food. In New York, infant care at a center averages $13,630 a year.

One culprit in underfunding child care is the culture war. Often, those who believe that a parent -- a mom -- should stay home and raise children oppose child-care subsidies. But given modern economic realities, parents will work. Seventy percent of mothers with young children are employed outside the home. And census officials are predicting a boom in the number of single mothers on Long Island, as figures are released this week.

Besides, 50 years of research has found that children of working parents don't turn out to be much different from those with stay-at-home parents, at least when it comes to academic achievement and behavior. That's according to an analysis published in January in the journal Psychological Bulletin, which examined 69 child care studies conducted between 1960 and March 2010.

It's the decent thing to do to help families get on their feet and stay there, not to mention to raise a generation of kids who are prepared for success. But if decency isn't persuasive, think of all the money we'll save on special ed, public assistance and juvenile incarceration.

First published in Newsday

Schools challenged to cut costs, preserve quality

A couple of weeks have passed since I asked people in this space to send ideas about cutting school costs, without harming the things we all cherish -- our best teachers, high academic goals, and the extracurriculars that inspire kids to find their place in the world.

I've been overwhelmed by the response. Not so much the volume -- about 45 calls, e-mails and letters -- but by the quality. People have sent thoughtful, 4- and 5-page letters with good ideas about how to cut spending without hurting students. Former and current school superintendents, school board members, teachers and their spouses, parents -- they all want to get in on the conversation.

The response made me wonder whether, as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo tries to target his $1.5-billion cuts to school budgets statewide this coming year, it might be worth convening a panel of informed citizens to come up with recommendations.

Here's your best advice:

--Salaries make up 60 percent to 75 percent of school spending. Freeze salaries, including the automatic yearly longevity "step" raises, and stop giving increases for extra training that, while important, adds little to classroom effectiveness -- such as courses on sexual harassment or peanut allergies.

--Give school boards more spine. Require that contract negotiations take place on a townwide, regional or statewide basis. Prohibit school districts from hiring board members' families. Stop "loading up" school boards with people who work as school administrators or teachers in neighboring districts.

--Do the math. One man wrote that his district had 6,687 students and 725 teachers. Figuring about 24 students per class . . . that leaves 446 teachers who aren't in the classroom. What are they doing, exactly? Those who wrote me seem very concerned about the large numbers of adults in schools.

--Consolidate neighborhood schools. Lawrence has closed two school buildings, netting $30 million. That money was used for maintenance to other buildings ($17 million) and a reduction in property taxes.

--Make athletics and other activities pay-to-play. Parents should pay for their kids to participate, and the group could raise money for families who can't afford it.

--Increase class sizes, especially in the upper grades. Why can't high schools use lecture halls, like colleges do? Or offer online classes?

--Charge parents whose kids are earning college credits while in high school. They would be paying the college for those credits otherwise.

--Require schools to "go green," inspiring energy savings of 10 percent or more.

--Penalize teachers who are absent a lot. (Although it's not a cost savings, another idea is to reward teachers who work in difficult school districts.)

--Put high school and college students in kindergarten and first grade classes, and give them college credit to help out.

--Consolidate school districts. This was mentioned a lot, but the political reality doesn't seem to favor it.

--Do away with universal bus service.

--Get rid of tenure.

When my family moved here in 2003, the schools were a big draw. Long Island needs to treat the quality of its schools as a treasure, even as we pare them down to a more reasonable cost.

The most depressing response when I asked for ideas about cutting school costs was this: "There have been no solutions and likely never will be any." The best? "It only takes some good ideas and those with the strength of conviction to get the job done."

So, what's it going to be, Long Island?

First published in Newsday

Public schools lack independence to analyze cost-savings

Lately, everyone seems to be offering ideas about how to save money in the public schools. People familiar with business or even household budgets look at the problem and want to apply a little common sense. One of the most popular suggestions: Cut the number of superintendents down to one each for Nassau and Suffolk counties, for a potential savings of more than $25 million.

That may sound like a lot, but it would amount to just one-third of 1 percent of the $7.5 billion that Long Island's 124 school districts spend each year. Even so, it's clear that residents are ready for some sign of good-faith reductions from schools.

Decreasing the number of superintendents gained wattage last week as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo addressed crowds around the state and talked about how much these school leaders are paid. He says that 40 percent make $200,000 or more.

Teachers' raises, "steps" (built-in longevity raises) and credits for coursework - which add up to increases of about 6 percent a year - also have Long Islanders reaching for their budget shears. So do the cadres of assistant superintendents, directors, assistant directors, principals, assistant principals - and on and on.

Per-pupil costs reach $23,000 in some Long Island districts, more than double the national average of $10,259. So, yes, Long Island's school costs appear fat. That's why it's surprising that study groups charged with finding savings always come up with so little.

Take the years-long initiative by Nassau County school districts to consolidate non-classroom operations. Albany gave the districts a $1-million grant to figure out how to save money, in part by jointly bidding contracts. The study group looked at student busing, school inspections and cell-phone use. It spent half its grant money - and came up with a mere $760,000 in potential economies. Early estimates were $5 million in savings a year. What a disappointment.

Then there's the Suffolk County study that was supposed to save money through pooled health insurance. A consultant concluded that the reduction would amount to two-tenths of 1 percent of current costs. That useless exercise was funded by a $45,000 state grant.

These studies are plainly approaching the question the wrong way. They seem to eliminate from the outset any possibility that would cause a friend or ally to forfeit cash. For example, the Nassau County group declined to consider using the county attorney's office for legal work, preferring instead to continue paying outside lawyers "experienced" in school law. As if the county attorney couldn't gain adequate experience within a short time.

People inside the school community, who are invariably leading these studies, just aren't independent enough to ask the hard questions. But outsiders are rarely invited in. Instead, those outside the school corridors are essentially told: You don't understand the requirements and pressures on schools. And outsiders are never trusted with essential information to make smart decisions. If you've ever tried to read a school budget, you know what I mean.

We need some sort of hybrid, an independent study group with insider knowledge, like the 2006 state Berger Commission on hospital closings. Budgets are tight. It would be wonderful to find the $1.5 billion in school savings that Gov. Cuomo has targeted without sacrificing music or art, accelerated programs or special education resources, late buses or athletic programs. Maybe that's impossible. Anyone with a novel approach, please drop me an e-mail. This problem needs all the brainpower Long Islanders can bring to bear.

First published in Newsday

Americans should have longer school days, longer school years

In these days of tiger-mother hysteria about raising children with academic backbone, President Barack Obama has weighed in with yet another cause for paranoia. The president dropped India and China into his State of the Union speech last week, just long enough to say they are educating their children earlier and longer.

Generally, school days are longer in Asian countries, and vacation breaks, though more frequent, are shorter - no more than five weeks in summer. Subjects are introduced earlier. South Korean parents, for example, insisted that President Lee Myung-bak recruit more English teachers, so that kids could begin language lessons in the first grade.

Research supports these measures as important to kids' learning. Few educators would disagree that more time on task and shorter intervals away from the classroom are beneficial.

Obama's clear implication is that if we want to keep up, to hold on to a place of prosperity in an increasingly competitive world, we should be considering these things.

Americans have one of the shortest school years on the planet. Our kids attend school for 180 days each year, while Germany and Japan average 230 days. In South Korea - where teachers are hailed as "nation builders" - school is in session for 225 days each year.

By the time American students reach eighth grade, they've spent roughly 400 fewer days in school. So there's a lot of pressure on teachers to cover subjects in a shorter time, and in less depth.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, middle school is where American students begin to fall behind their global peers. By high school, among 30 developed nations, U.S. students rank 15th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math and 24th in problem-solving. People who study these trends, like Education Secretary Arne Duncan, believe that the United States has stood still while others have moved past us. In an October speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Duncan said, "Here in the United States, we simply flat-lined. We stagnated. We lost our way, and others literally passed us by."

So while people of my generation might say to ourselves, "We didn't know much math, and we turned out OK," we'd be missing the point. The rest of the world is changing. We need to prepare our children for a knowledge economy.

It's not entirely bad for Americans that other countries are growing wealthier and better educated. Having a market for our products abroad is essential to our economic growth, and an educated world is a safer one.

But we don't want to be left behind. Some U.S. schools have been experimenting with more time in the classroom. Roughly 1,000 schools - including 800 charters and about 200 traditional district schools - have expanded their schedules by more than one to two hours a day, according to the National Center on Time and Learning. KIPP Academy, one charter success story that started in the Bronx, requires parents to sign a contract saying they will not pull kids out for a family vacation.

Expect to see more of this. As Congress moves to reauthorize and rework No Child Left Behind, the Obama administration is pushing for flexibility for school districts to break from established norms. In November, the New York State School Boards Association advocated a longer school day and year "where it will serve students well."

Midafternoon dismissal times and long summer breaks are impractical holdovers from an agrarian past - increasingly so, as more homes are led by single parents or two working parents. It's time to dust off those problem-solving skills and put them back to work.

Originally published in Newsday

Families of the mentally ill need stronger laws

It's obvious now that Jared Lee Loughner should have been stopped. In accounts by news organizations, his madness escalated so clearly: the classroom outburst about strapping bombs to babies, the government conspiracy talk, the eerie, miscued smiling.

But for those of us with a schizophrenic in the family, the progress can look a lot like a rebellious teenager dabbling in drugs and struggling to cross into manhood - not ideal, but in a word, normal.

People ask, why didn't Loughner's parents stop him? We may never know what other steps the family took - nor do we know whether the suspect is mentally ill, though he displays all the signs. But his father was alarmed enough to chase Jared into the desert - ultimately losing him - the morning of the shootings at the Safeway meet-and-greet in Tucson. To me, as the sister of a schizophrenic man, this is the quintessential family face of mental illness: chasing, and powerless.

Families, and other authorities, have too few tools for this disease that sickens men on average at 18 and women at 25. In Arizona, like more than half the states, in the absence of specific threats, it's impossible to force someone into treatment. The law requires that individuals constitute a danger to themselves or others. That means, in most cases, a suicide attempt or a crime. As we know from Tucson, waiting for such evidence can be fatal.

Since the 1970s, Americans have moved firmly away from forced treatment, horrified by stories of brutish conditions, lobotomies and traitorous relatives signing away a poor soul's freedom. But we have journeyed so far in the opposite direction, in our concern for the civil rights of the mentally ill, that they are too often going without the medical care they need.

Like other illnesses, this disease can worsen when left untreated. The consequences can be catastrophic.

Postponing help until after a crime has packed this country's jails and prisons with the mentally ill: The Treatment Advocacy Center, a national organization that wants stronger involuntary-treatment laws, estimates there are 280,000 mentally ill locked in correction facilities today, up from 170,000 a decade ago. These people are often not receiving the care they need to get well and live lives outside of a cell.

In September, Pima Community College, where Jared Loughner was enrolled, was sufficiently unnerved after several incidents that it sent two campus police to tell Loughner and his parents that he had been suspended - and those officers had backup waiting in the neighborhood, just in case. The school wanted him to be cleared by a mental health professional before he could return.

The school protected its students. But didn't college officials also have an obligation to the greater community? William Galston, who advised the Clinton administration on domestic policy, argued in The New Republic last week that college personnel, Loughner's parents and other adults should have been required to report his actions to the police and the courts.

One result, at least in New York, might have been a judge's order for a temporary commitment and medication. The threshhold here is "need for treatment," not just a person's likelihood of being dangerous. Nearly half use this standard, and 44 permit court-ordered medication. But the laws are rarely used. California, for example, recently passed Laura's Law but has not enforced it, lacking money and treatment resources, and fearful of violating patients' freedoms.

It's the nature of mental illness that nearly half of those suffering do not realize they are sick. That's why those of us around them need to give chase - and persist until we help them.

Originally published in Newsday

Economy makes more kids homeless

Every year as the cold weather arrives, the U.S. Conference of Mayors conducts a survey of who's living in homeless shelters. This year, it uncovered a troubling statistic: a 9 percent increase in the number of families who are homeless.

These numbers have been increasing - the Department of Housing and Urban Development notes a 30 percent growth since 2007 - and are expected to bump up again next year.

Many of these families, remarkably, continue to function, even as the basic need for shelter is threatened or removed entirely. Wendell Chu, the school superintendent in East Islip, says that more students are showing up for class with their homes facing foreclosure. Many more qualify for free and reduced-price lunch - another measure of families in distress.

"This creates stress for these kids," he says. "It affects how kids come to school, their readiness to learn."

As the country continues to pump billions of dollars into homeless programs, food stamps and other safety-net services, the very people these programs are meant to help - mothers and children - continue to struggle. While the welfare overhaul of the late 1990s was intended to create a path from welfare to work, its effect in the current troubled economy may well be simply dumping people without support.

The mayors were asked to identify the three main causes of homelessness among households with children. The top responses were unemployment (76 percent), lack of affordable housing (72 percent), poverty (56 percent), domestic violence (24 percent) and low-paying jobs (20 percent).

To be sure, we are living through a historic economic catastrophe, and this period will leave a mark on our national psyche. More Americans were poor in 2009 - 43.6 million total - than at any time since the U.S. Census Bureau began estimating the poverty rate 50 years ago. Jobless rates are also very high.

Our social safety net simply has too many holes. While some dismiss the homeless - depicting them as either too crazy, drugged or afraid of the authorities to seek help - surely we're not ready to concede that there's an acceptable level of homelessness for families.

The Long Island Coalition for the Homeless is preparing for its annual count of homeless people later this month. Last year, the group found 1,046 families in Suffolk County and 446 in Nassau living in emergency shelters or transitional housing.

Long Island wasn't part of the Conference of Mayors survey, but the coalition's Julee King says the trends hold true here. In the past 18 to 24 months, the coalition has fielded more calls from families, particularly those being evicted because the homes they're renting are being repossessed.

It's extraordinary that this is happening on well-to-do Long Island. Fortunately, we have a network of charities, religious and secular, that provides temporary housing. But it would be better to prevent homelessness in the first place. The dislocation is disruptive, as the school superintendent points out, and it's inhumane.

Boston is experimenting with banning evictions. Many cities, including Chicago, are expanding consumer credit counseling. Of those surveyed in the mayors' study, 92 percent said housing vouchers to reduce rents would be an effective remedy for homelessness, and 71 percent advocate higher wages for low-end jobs. Given economic realities, that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

Still, these are important ideas. Nobody, least of all children, should have to cope with so much insecurity when it comes to something as basic as shelter.

Originally published in Newsday

NY needs to cut special ed spending

Two years ago this month, the Suozzi Commission came out with a startling report. Charged with finding a way to lower property taxes, the group - formally named the New York State Commission on Property Tax Relief - turned sharply off course to detail the escalating cost of special education.

For more than a year, the commission looked for fundamental reasons why New York's property taxes are so high. It asked public school officials who, one after another, pointed to special education.

So, the commission assigned a task force to examine special ed. It found that the state has 204 "mandates" beyond federal rules that make our special education system the most expensive in the country. On average, New York schools spend $9,494 per pupil in regular classrooms, and a prodigious $23,898 for each special education student.

Our state is rightly proud of its generous and progressive history on education. But you have to wonder, as a new administration takes over in Albany next month with a $9-billion deficit chained to its ankle, whether it's time to take another look at the Suozzi Commission's findings. After all, the state Council of School Superintendents called them "the most thorough independent review of New York's special education policies in the more than 30 years since the current basic structure was put into place" - yet they've essentially been ignored.

One problem with special ed is that too many students qualify. Don't assume that these programs serve only those students diagnosed with a severe mental or physical challenge. In fact, more than half the students in special ed simply need extra help in reading or math, speech therapy or other support.

Schools receive extra resources for special ed students, so they have an incentive to label marginal students as disabled. But what if not all of them are really disabled? Not only would that be a waste of money, it would harm the truly disabled students by overburdening the resources meant to serve them.

Also, shifting non-disabled students into special education can stigmatize them and sidesteps problems, like failing schools, that should be addressed head-on.

Once kids are in special ed, schools must meet minimum requirements for them, like drafting an individualized education program every year. Students in speech therapy had to attend at least two sessions a week - no matter what their needs were - until the Board of Regents relaxed that rule last month.

Such regulations may sound trifling, until you consider there are 204 of them, on top of a tome of federal rules.

School officials are also required to hold legal hearings, at an average cost of $75,000, if a parent questions a student's placement. (Parents pay some of the cost.) In the 2007-08 school year, 6,157 hearings were requested. A case for one child on Long Island cost $300,000.

Parents can sue to have the school district pay for private school tuition - as much as $25,000 a year or more - and for bus service within 50 miles of a child's home. In theory, a Mineola student could qualify for door-to-door service to a school in Greenwich, Conn. - although it defies logic that a parent would want that.

Last month, New York's Regents did away with a few of the 204 mandates, but nothing that will cut costs. What's needed is a study of results: which strategies work best to move students on to college or the workforce. Schools should know what leads to success.

Parent advocates for students with disabilities correctly argue that early intervention - say, remedial reading in lower grades - prevents problems later on. And no one wants a child to struggle needlessly. But the spending gap is outrageous. It's time to find a middle ground.

Originally published in Newsday

We middle-class Moms must make some trade-offs

Here's a post I wrote, published today on the NYT's Motherlode blog. I wrote this in response to a Mom's entry about her nanny, which you can read all about here. My two cents:

We're going through a time of change, where we middle class women find ourselves "required" to work and raise children at the same time. In some ways, our lives may be less fulfilling than our mothers'. It's fair for us to debate these issues here, out loud.

Having said that, I think that we're all going to have to accept the tradeoffs that our work-family situations require. It hurts me, sometimes a lot, that I'm not home with my two 'tween daughters. But I take strength from knowing that I am providing for them, materially, by working. These are competing feelings that I have to reconcile. When I feel that I've been too immersed in work, I cut back and take my kids out for a special day or weekend. I've sometimes changed jobs to have more time with them. I suppose that if I ever got to the end of that line of logic, I would join the radical moms I've read about who are growing their own food and rejecting consumerism and status labels. I'm privileged to have all of these options, but that doesn't make it easy or painless.

I also take solace in the idea that if our generation works through some of these issues, it will benefit our sons and daughters when they're raising families.

Child care choices persist into adolescence

Last month, a study about early child care came out with mixed results – one good for day care, and one bad. I decided to go back and take a look at how the news media covered the story. I have a bias: I think that we in the media reflect the American public's ongoing discomfort with the choices that dual-income families must make. Even though, at 46 percent of homes with children, dual-income households are becoming the norm. As I say, the study came up with good and bad findings. One of the biggest long-term projects of its kind, the University of California-Irvine study quizzed 15-year-olds who had been in day care as little ones. The study found that the teens who had attended "high-quality" day care did better in school than even those kids who stayed home. But the study also found that all day-care kids, regardless of the quality of care, were slightly more likely to take risks.

Is that a bad thing? Apparently, in teenagers it is. When we think of teens and risk, we think “drugs” and “sex.” Although, adult risk-takers, like inventors and money managers, are often highly compensated for such.

Anyway…. The results: My quick Nexis search turned up six neutral headlines, such as this one from States News Service, “Link between child care and academic achievement and behavior persists into adolescence.”

Five headlines gave a positive spin, like this from the Dayton Daily News: “Quality care in childhood pays off, study says.”

And seven headlines played up the negative. Here, from the Chicago Tribune, “Study: Day care kids show rash behavior as teens.”

I’m going to conclude that my bias at the outset was a little rash. This is fairly even-handed coverage – and good news for those of us who care about such things.

I also found the description of what constitutes high-quality child care to be illuminating, and cause for optimism. I remember looking for this description right after the study was published in mid-May, but I didn’t find anything this complete. I wonder if UCI updated it. No matter, here is study director Deborah Lowe Vandell’s take:

Q: How do you define a “high-quality” child care setting? ?A: It’s one where caregivers are warm, loving, sensitive, respectful and responsive to children’s needs. There should also be cognitive stimulation, with teachers talking and reading to children. If a child is wandering or getting into conflicts with other children, caregivers should find ways to intervene. If children are busy and engaged, however, caregivers should not interrupt or intrude.

What do you think? What's your observation about how child care affects kids? Does your child care measure up to this standard?

'Rescuing' kids from child care

Have you ever tried to rescue another Mom from her child-care choices? My sister texted me today to say that another Mom from school invited her 8-year-old son over for the following afternoon. My sister said yes, thinking it was a playdate invitation. But apparently, the other Mom was reacting to my nephew's fussing about going to his after-school child care. The other Mom said he clearly didn't like his day care. So, she thought she would give him an afternoon off -- presumably in the more wholesome environment of her home. The thing is, this Mom was mistaken about why my nephew was fussing. He likes his day care, but he also wanted to go over to her house to play on his friend's new ride-on scooter. It says a lot about our continuing guilt over child care that this Mom felt she had to butt in and rescue my nephew. I think she was being very judgmental.

We're becoming ever more dependent on non-relatives taking care of our kids -- what with the growth of two-income homes, single parents, mobile workers. Yet, we still can't seem to resolve that child care is an acceptable way for our children to spend their time. I'll go out on a limb here and say that it's mostly women who are so uncomfortable with "strangers" -- that is, trained child-care workers -- taking care of our kids. In the back of our minds, we compare this arrangement with Mom or Grandma watching the kids, and the strangers never quite measure up.

I'm guilty of this myself. Several years ago, I met my daughter's friend at the YMCA, ready to put in a day of assistance with her Mom who worked at the Y. I offered to take the girl home to play at my house, certain that it would be a better day for the kid. But her Mom quite rightly said, "She's looking forward to spending the day with me." Her Mom was very nice about it, and we're still friends. But I wonder at my own motivation, trying to "rescue" this kid from a day at work. It's quite possible that she enjoyed her day with Mom and learned a lot in the experience.

What do you think?

Dual-income families show signs of strain

We parents know we're stressed out. Now researchers are documenting it. Social scientists from UCLA installed videocameras in the homes of 32 families, all middle class, with two earners and multiple children. The cameras recorded nearly every waking moment at home for a week. Writes the New York Times' Benedict Carey:

... the U.C.L.A. project was an effort to capture a relatively new sociological species: the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household. The investigators have just finished working through the 1,540 hours of videotape, coding and categorizing every hug, every tantrum, every soul-draining search for a missing soccer cleat....

Dual-earner households with children have existed for years, especially in lower-income neighborhoods. But the numbers have jumped in recent decades, to 46 percent of families with children in 2008 from 36 percent in 1975.

Kathleen Christensen of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which financed the project, said parents learned on the fly — and it showed.

I think that if we parents could anticipate some of the challenges and decisions we have to make, we'd be better off. Almost no family I know is living in the same circumstances, years later, in which they started.

One family I know, for example, relocated several times between the cities of New York and Los Angeles -- only to discover that their two sons needed less regimentation than city living could provide. My brother Bill made a similar decision, moving from inside the Washington Beltway to rural Connecticut, where his in-laws have provided support and extended family connections.

Dan-my-husband and I have taken turns commuting to New York City, which is about an 80-minute trip, one way. One of us always works closer to home, in case we get one of those emergency calls from the school that our daughter is sick -- or even just to deliver a pair of sneakers in time for gym class.

Each decision to arrange one's life differently is a value judgment. I'm exploring these values for my book-in-progress, Rocket Science for Working Moms. One of my values is a desire for my children to feel safe and supported, even though I have a 40-hour-plus time commitment to my employer. Other parents have altered their lives so their kids can learn to entertain themselves imaginatively without tying them to a dead-bolted schedule.

Learning on the fly is common, but it isn't much fun -- as the researchers on the UCLA project discovered.

“The very purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever,” said one, Anthony P. Graesch, a postdoctoral fellow, about the experience.

Crossing the pre-teen ravine

A couple of nights ago, my two daughters and I set up yoga mats in the living room. I had discovered that I could stream yoga instruction videos through Netflix's "instant play" option. So, we set the laptop on the coffee table, selected a video and stretched our way through downward dog and camel. I'm searching for new ways for us to enjoy time together, now that they are leaving childhood. I'm actually in a small panic about the whole thing, although I tell myself that it will pass. Dan-my-husband went through this several months ago, as Isabelle rounded her 12th-and-a-half year and bulleted toward 13. "She was such a great kid," he mused one evening, changing into his pajamas.

"She's still a great kid!" I replied, defensively. But I knew what he meant. Her interest in being a child had been full and complete. She barreled down snowy hills, caring to catch every mogul. She worked her diving board technique with a religious passion. She never met a dog she didn't go out of her way to greet. Rocks from her collected adventures littered my kitchen windowsills.

Isabelle's maturity was the first shock, but Charlotte, 17.5 months younger, is following fast behind. They are dragging up the rope ladder behind them. Suddenly, I find myself with -- O, joy! -- time to pursue the interests I have been suppressing these long years, more than a decade. I emerged recently from a three-month jag of writing a book proposal, having satisfied a long-deferred longing in my heart, only to find that my daughters no longer needing me so intensely. I felt as though I had skipped a chapter somewhere, lost a transition. Lost in transition. Maybe that's what I am.

But I don't want to wallow in the melodrama of it all. And so, the yoga class. I am determined to move into the future alongside my daughters, these near-women. I hope to cross soon to the side where the gain is as clear and perceptible as the feeling of loss.

Post-racial, post-partisan, post-Mommy Wars?

Our society is said to be getting past a lot of things these days. We elected our first black president. We're increasingly registering to vote unidentified with either of the two major parties. It makes me wonder if we are also ready to slough off the labels -- and bitter tensions -- that apply to the Working Moms vs. Stay-at-Home Moms. Writing in O: The Oprah Magazine this month, author Elizabeth Gilbert writes about the accomplished lives of her women friends -- Moms, single career women, all stripes -- and wonders why so many of them are waking up at 3 a.m. tormented with self-doubt. Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love believes that women lack "centuries of educated, autonomous female role models to imitate," and that we are forging new paths.

By all rights, every one of these clever, inventive women should be radiant with self-satisfaction. Instead, they twitch with near-constant doubt, somehow worrying that they are failing at life.

When I look at my life and the lives of my female friends these days -- with our dizzying number of opportunities and talents -- I sometimes feel as though we are all mice in a giant experimental maze, scurrying around frantically, trying to find our way through. But maybe there's a good historical reason for all this overwhelming confusion. We don't have centuries of educated, autonomous female role models to imitate here (there were no women quite like us until very recently), so nobody has given us a map. As a result, we each race forth blindly into this new maze of limitless options. And the risks are steep. We make mistakes. We take sharp turns, hoping to stumble on an open path, only to bump into dead-end walls and have to back up and start all over again. We push mysterious levers, hoping to earn a reward, only to learn -- whoops, that was a suffering button!

She encourages women to keep trying, and failing when necessary, and to keep mapping our own lives. This is the impulse that has led me to begin writing a book on working motherhood, this desire to help make sense of all of our choices and to describe new possible paths for the next generation of women. I'm calling it Rocket Science for Working Moms: Facts and Fuel for Women Launching Their Own Journeys. In it, I discuss a lot of the wrong turns I made, and how my family, and other families I know, have crafted unique ways of working out the new lives open to us -- filled with greater opportunity for women, increased financial pressure and higher expectations for how we raise our children.

Gilbert writes that we should lay down arms in the Mommy Wars and stop competing with each other over whose life is more perfect, fulfilling, correct. I couldn't agree more. But I'm not sure it's human nature to do that. If you're reading this, let me know what you think.