Dear Source:
A day on or off it wouldn't change our schools one bit, ask your self the difference between public schools and private schools, the biggest difference is parental involvement. How do you blame parents struggling to make ends meet for an inability to compete with the rich who can afford to take time for there kids schools? How do you replace that involvement in children's lives, especially in a culture like ours? Poor paying jobs, few expectations on those with good jobs, crime goes unreported because of revenge, lack of punishment and the VI good old cruising network. The children know that they can get away with anything, they have a firm belief in the pecking order in there schools and that it will continue as long as they live on St. Croix. Because no one dares to address the real problem so many solutions fail, its not funding, better teachers, or more hours. Its a systematic denial of the problem, its a systematic inequality with private schools. VI kids can learn they can succeed but not all the children and not all the families, the children are tied to their families and there families are tied to this culture. I'm not talking about the cruising culture of 30 years ago, today's semi ghetto mentality, blaming the rich blaming the white, blaming the government. The drinking the drugging and the abusive family members or schoolmates.
So commenting about how sending the kids to school on inauguration day would in some way combat what these children face is laughable, you should be asking why the parents didn't sign up to spend one day a month at there kids school to celebrate the inauguration why the employers didn't pay them for one hour a week to go home and spend it with there kids, you should be asking why you didn't volunteer to do some community service, on St. Croix there's enough people wanting to tell us what others should do, and protecting our children from enjoying there own perceptions of what America electing Obama means.
Forget your good intentions what we need is truth and personal responsibity, we need equity in our public schools with the best private schools on the island, because when someone's robbing your house or is taking drugs you can rest assured its not a graduate of a private school the vast majority of the time.
Paul Vrabcak
Federiksted, St. Croix
Editor's note: We welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to visource@gmail.com.
