$25,000 Bonus in Janey's Stocking, Piece of Coal for DCPS

Hey, this is Denisse coming to all you readers out there once again. So, I was reading the newspaper and I came across this article in the Washington Post. After I finished reading, I realized that not a whole lot has changed since I graduated from Bell Multicultural High School last year.

We always had to experience a lack of textbooks as well. I mean, it just used to frustrate us because not only did we have to share textbooks, our library was worthless too. We literally had old textbooks from like the 80's, and when it was time to type up our research for reports, our computers never worked. There was this one computer in the library that would actually eat our disc. Then, we’d try to use one of our teacher’s computers, and it would eat our disk for real.

At YARG, we wrote a research report two summers ago, about the root causes of youth violence. From the stories that we heard from other young people, and our own experiences, we wrote about the lack of resources in DC schools as one of the root causes of youth violence. Some people might not understand how it relates. But if you think about it, young people see what’s going on in their community and in their schools and it makes them feel like the city could give two squirts of piss about them.

When the new baseball stadium had its first game, YEA, the Youth Education Alliance, took a stand and protested about the government having money to build the stadium, but not putting enough money towards public education in the city. YEA is another youth-led organizing group that focuses on the better development of the schools (i.e. lunch, bathrooms, books) in D.C.

It’s definitely not right that the superintendent is getting a bonus of $25,000, and is getting paid $250,000 a year, but, DCPS is lacking textbooks.That money is just going down the toilet. I felt like I needed to respond to this article because I can really relate to the little girl’s situation. Thanks for reading!!