The competitive environment is ruining East Bay schools and it's negatively impacting our kids and community (Rant)
First of all, this is a complete rant I wanted to get off my chest and didn't know where else to vent. I'm also interested to hear other opinions and perspectives.
To provide some context to this rant; I grew up here (40+ yrs) and went to school in the East Bay area. I have had kids in PUSD for 12 years and my wife has been a teacher at a few East Bay schools.
I have seen a significant change in the schools and not necessarily for the best, at least with regard to overall student happiness and mental health. On paper the schools look great. We have very high performing students with respect to test scores and college acceptance rates but my personal opinion is, all of this comes at a cost to students mental health and negatively impacts our community as a whole.
Being an average student is looked down on. If a kid isn't taking a majority AP classes they risk being labeled as "dumb" and often made fun of for not taking advanced classes. Dublin Unified recently limited the number of AP classes to help reduce student stress and parents flipped out. Very tragically and sadly, DUSD has had a few teen suicides that helped initiate some of the changes. The pressure also impacts students who need extra help due to learning disabilities or other factors. I have personally seen kids that require extra help either not take classes that offer assistance or get made fun of for taking them. Help is often avoided because they don't want to be label as the "dumb kid". I know this has always been a thing but it is magnified 100x due to the environment we're in. Being average in math has been a particular struggle for our kids. Because so many students in the area take additional math classes after school, average or even above average kids feel "dumb". My kids have always been above the state and national average and have all felt "dumb" when it comes to math. Because the majority of students are high performing, those that require extra help become an inconvenience and end up falling behind and eventually slip through the cracks. I know of kids in middle school that have a hard time reading but are offered no help or assistance from the school despite failing basically every subject.
School sports and non-academic after school activities are dwindling in part because many kids are in tutoring or some academic focused activity after school and on weekends. It saddens me to see a line of parents and kids out the door at some of these tutoring places on the weekend. IMHO, school (and homework time) is for learning and anything outside of that is to build social skills and play. Social skills are arguably just as important as doing well in school and I think many kids are missing out on learning how to appropriately socialize during a critical time of their development. Sure, they can do advanced match but they have no creativity or critical thinking and have a difficult time working with their peers. The result, with respect to the workforce, are book-smart employees that no one wants to work with because they lack social and interpersonal skills.
The parent pressure has significantly impacted how schools handle and react to students that need extra assistance. Schools cater to their constituents, parents. The result is an imbalance between the districts educational mission and the loudest parents in the room. I see WAY more effort and money spent on building top-notch facilities and programs of interest to the community while mental health and other student services are cut. As an example, I recently learned PUSD has one behaviorist for the district of 13,000 students because they recently cut additional Special Education behavior program managers to save about $2M. Meanwhile literally hundreds of millions are being spent on new facilities and science programs while teacher pay and student services have been cut year after year. The pressure parents are putting on the schools and the students is out of control. The pressure parents place on their kids to get into college alone is absolutely insane to me! Families paying up to $60k on a college application coach is an absolute joke.
I work in tech and I have seen this change in the workplace as well. For example, during a conversation with my manager, I proudly told them that my high school child wants to teach special education or work with developmentally disabled individuals. Their response was a chuckle followed by "I don't know what I would do if my kid wanted to do something like that! I hope your kid can marry someone rich. Or hopefully you can steer them toward something else before they graduate." Of course I am encouraging my child to pursue what she loves.
Honestly, I'm completely exhausted with some of the changes I have seen in this area. I love so much about the East Bay but the hustle culture and competitive environment is causing a lot of sourness and community disfunction.
Ok, end of my rant. I'm curious if it's just me? Am I overreacting? Has it always been like this and I'm just now noticing? Or, are others that have been here for a while and noticed a similar change?