Sunriver Elementary School Uses Students as Janitors

First off, a quick rant: I read about this story in the local daily paper this morning, and intended on blogging about it earlier, but their Web site doesn’t have the story. Anywhere. It wasn’t until I got a Google News Alert that the story had been picked up on the Associated Press wire that I could even point people to this story. OK, I’m a dork as the story is online locally , though it didn’t show up in my Google Alert, and Google News should’ve caught it, nor did I find it on their site easily the first time. My apologies, just the same.

Anyway, in yet another example of why our school system is a laughing stock, because of budget cuts in the district, there’s a shortage of janitors at some schools. At Sunriver’s Three Rivers elementary, kids are being asked to clean up:

The students are learning these skills because the fast-growing Bend-La Pine School District reduced its custodial staff in a budget-saving move. At the same time, the district added two new schools and several additions.

With fewer adult hands to clean the buildings, several elementary schools have asked kids to help with the chores.

The benefit, school officials said, is a chance to learn about responsibility while taking ownership in their school.

I wonder how OSHA would feel about this? I know the housekeeping department in our company has to abide by a pile of OSHA regulations, and if those kids are doing anything remotely janitorial (especially at their age — we won’t even get into child-labor stuff here), there’s a chance the school be shut down. Now that this story has hit the wire, it’s only going to be messier for the local school district.

Personally, any time that takes my kid away from learning what a teacher is there to teach them is wasted. If they’re not getting taught this kind of responsibility at home, then the kids have no hope anyway.