Today three of my intersession students were issued truancy tickets while trying to get to my class. Up until this week, our theater class was being held off campus at the South Central Library and was problem free. It\u2019s interesting that in the two days our class was actually held at school it has been plagued by problems; the school is literally making it impossible for my students to access their intersession elective course.<\/p>\n
Apparently, today is part of the city\u2019s crackdown on student truancy. The municipal law states that minors under the age of 18 cannot be outside \u201cloitering\u201d between the hours of 8:30 and 1:30. The problem, apparently, is that our class starts at 10 a.m. I asked one of the officers (trying to issue a ticket to another<\/em> one of my students!) how my students were expected to get to class. His response was that they either needed to be accompanied by an adult (which is an unrealistic expectation for these students as their parents are working) or to get to school at 8:30 and wait for the class to begin! I shouldn\u2019t really be surprised by this kind of response at this point, but it\u2019s frustrating nonetheless. As it stands, some of my best students will now be missing school next month to go to court to fight a truancy ticket for trying to go to school voluntarily.<\/p>\n This feels like institutionalized, deliberate frustration of student ability to access the educational system. None of my students were surprised by today\u2019s events; they\u2019ve been slowly programmed to understand that there are structural barriers standing in their way to getting the educational experiences that, I\u2019d assume, are easily found in other parts of city.<\/p>\n I also find it quasi-amusing that for the past week I\u2019ve been parking my car in a one hour parking area for literally the whole day. The thing is, everyone at Manual Arts knows that you\u2019re not going to get ticketed for parking your car in these areas; maybe the police are too busy issuing other, more important citations to today\u2019s youth?? And knowing how worked up other communities get about their parking (go over by Doughboys<\/a> and you\u2019ll see signposts with 6 or 7 different parking signs listing the various parking constraints \u2013 and they differ on every block), I\u2019m willing to bet that the parking to truancy ticket ratio is exactly the opposite in most places compared to Manual…<\/p>\n Grandmaster Flash still tells it like it is.<\/p>\nTell people this is awesome:<\/h3>