Poor performance reason for exodus

School enrollment in Snohomish County is dropping and the administrations are dumb-founded? You have got to be kidding. Notably absent in this article (“‘Where did kids go?’ schools ask,” Nov. 23) was the change in private schools and home school populations. The school districts should look at that very carefully.

For many years, school performance has been dropping. There are a few shining stars out there, but they are the exception. Parents are getting more and more frustrated with how badly the public school system is performing. Unions and political agendas rule our school systems and the public is responding by pulling their kids out.

Not all the blame should be placed at the feet of the school systems, however. I challenge parents to ask themselves how much time they spend working with their kids on school work and academic achievement, including discipline. I know the excuses: not enough time, single parents, hard working dual jobs, WASL is too hard, etc. Regardless of who is to blame, school districts should expect this trend to continue. It is the private sector that will step up and provide solid education and produce the innovators, leaders and thinkers of the future. Public schools simply don’t have the political will to identify the issues and do something about them.

Parents don’t seem to be capable of training their kids to be good students so they relegate this responsibility to some government agency. By the way, voting for simple majority funding removed the very last tool parents had to try to hold schools accountable. We have nothing left because that’s the result of years of handing over responsibility. You may say that’s unfair but other than electing school boards, you just gave up any recourse but to read the WASL scores and wonder which private school you can afford. That decision is really “for the kids.”

Don Thompson