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SCHENECTADY
School chief wants to ease poverty’s harm
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Kathleen Moore at 395-3120 or moore@dailygazette.com.

    Schenectady’s new school superintendent is taking a new look at how poverty might be hurting Schenectady children.
    “Intense poverty deals like a trauma to kids,” Superintendent Laurence Spring said. “After a fire, a kid acts up in class and we say, ‘Oh my god, he just had a horrible thing happen to him.’ We respond a little differently.”
    Recent studies indicate that children in poverty feel as off-balance, fearful and uncertain as children who have just experienced a sudden trauma. But traumatized children routinely get counseling, while poor children do not.
    Spring thinks they need therapy to help them come to terms with the uncertainties in their lives. But that means paying for therapy for thousands of children.
    “We don’t have enough resources to address all the mental health needs,” Spring said.
He’s hoping to organize partnerships to help provide that therapy.
But one pediatrician wasn’t convinced that therapy is the answer. Dr. Ingrid Allard, who works at Albany Medical Center, said poverty isn’t traumatic.
“I don’t know if I’d describe poverty in and of itself as a trauma,” she said. “I think there are people that are poor that do OK.”
She noted that poverty and traumatic events are sometimes linked, and that long-term stress can lead to stress-related diseases.
“So trauma can be related to poverty,” she said.
But she doubted children who misbehave in school simply need therapy.
    “That, I really couldn’t say,” she said.
    Spring has been discussing the issue on Twitter, where he tweets daily as @SchnctdySuper. He plans to use Twitter regularly to talk with the public.
    “It’s a good way to create transparency with the public,” he said. “I can’t have a meeting with everyone. This is a reasonably convenient way to chime in and say, ‘I have an idea!’”
    For now, as he gets into the habit, his phone chimes every day to remind him to tweet. When he can’t think of anything to say, he tweets from his list of High Performance Management Principles, which he has posted next to his desk.
    He’s hoping those tweets will help him stay on the straight and narrow — and that they will provide ammunition for others if he strays.
    “They’ll say, ‘Didn’t you say you would do this?’” he said.
    Spring has also managed to sell his house in Cortland, where he lived while he led the Cortland schools. With his wife, he bought a house in the GE Realty Plot, which delighted his children. They are excitedly exploring the city parks, he said. .......................>>>>.................>>>>...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01002&AppName=1

You know something, if a child is diagnosed with Autism, they can collect social security benefits.

Wonder what type of benefits poverty disorder will harness.

How about preparing kids in middle and high school for REAL JOBS to get them off the hamster wheel in DSS. Maybe self-reliance and self-esteem are what's needed...not therapy. Last thing we need is more kids being dispensed drugs from 'therapy'.

Very bad idea.  

We can't do that Rachel the reality of the truth may shock their systems.

Well isn't that interesting.

Here's a guy who has no clue about poverty.   He buys a house for $299,000.  The mayor claims it's worth $312,000 and the previous owner has taken a HUMONGOUS LOSS as the previous owner paid $382,000!!!!!!!!!!    Wow, the dem team in Schenectady, look value took such a huge tumble.  Wow!!!!   Almost a $100,000 drop in price in just five years under the dems!!!!!!!!!!!!!!    But McCarthy says there's no need to reassess the city.

So the guy buys this house with 7 bedrooms, 5 fireplaces, 3.5 bathrooms, and the total living space in the house is roughly three times the amount of space that the typical family in a flat has, and probably more than twice what a one-family house has.

If he got a 4% mortgage rate with his roughly only 5% down payment, he is still looking at paying roughly $2,600 per month (taxes and fees are just about $1,200 per month), and even higher depending on how much his homeowners' insurance is.

The mortgage + taxes paid over the year is just slightly less than the total household income of $37,000 in the city.     Astounding, yes?

And now a super who thinks mental health "therapy" will help kids do better in school?   He's concerned because he does admit the limited resources.   Gee, how about he go to Phillip Morris and see if Morris will pay for it, after all, a $25,000,000 building and not a dime paid in taxes combined with Morris getting a STAR exemption ILLEGALLY.

But I do see he wants to make kids feel good, because that's more important than the subject material.   Won't be long more failures as the kids are promoted to the next grade to feel good about themselves.   Social promotion proponent.

MENTAL HEALTH THERAPY by those in charge is DANGEROUS....

AVOID THE LABEL....it follows you the rest of your life, and the kids won't even know the difference....

it will never be their own fight....it will always be about the label and some 'do-gooder' that helped me because
'I never had a chance'?????

is that not a stigma of it's own?

the contracts will remove the soul of the system like it did for hospice....it will become nothing more than
a talking point of uselessness......

they are labeling EVERYTHING in life as a disease....as if life itself IS disease.....

WTF has happened to the soul of mankind? lost in a sea of 'experts'.....

I watch elders get angry/upset at their aging process/living arrangements/family and right away psycho-therapy labels and
psychiatry drugs....

what ever happened to 'this is life'....anger/sadness/hate/love etc etc.....ARE LIFE.....seeking NOT to feel it is one's choice
but allowing 'experts' to tell us what is normal is WRONG......

we are meant to OWN our lives....not hand them over for some ICD-9 code for the purpose of billing/drugging/labeling......

THIS IS SAD and there's no drug to remove this WRONG THINKING.......

Wonder if this Super will choose to put his children in Yates Magnet School...maybe in the King School? Wanna bet they go to Paige, Woodlawn or even Brown.

Reminds me of "The Wall" - put all the kids in a meat grinder (drug them up) and then send them to school.

This is so offensive on so many levels. Where's the NAACP and ACLU on this one?

Quoted from rachel72

Wonder if this Super will choose to put his children in Yates Magnet School...maybe in the King School? Wanna bet they go to Paige, Woodlawn or even Brown.

Reminds me of "The Wall" - put all the kids in a meat grinder (drug them up) and then send them to school.

This is so offensive on so many levels. Where's the NAACP and ACLU on this one?

what's scary is that these leaders are NOT made in a vacuum.

they are to empower not label like cattle...

this is an offense on humankind....

SHAME SHAME SHAME....

He must be a cousin of  feelin'sorryforyou  Tonko

This is pure silliness.  It isn't the "poverty" creating the "trauma", it's the commercialism of America that tells children that everything they see advertised on TV, on billboards, everything they see in the shopping mall is RIGHTFULLY theirs.  And if they are unable to afford an XBox the Playstation, or whatever the newest toy that "everybody has to have" it is traumatic because of their warped sense of reality that corporate America creates.  The majority of Americans that live in "poverty" is not the abject poverty you see in 3rd world countries. It is American poverty, where we think people wearing second hand Tommy Hilfiger jeans is appalling.

Maybe they should provide therapy through an iPAD App!  Being sarcastic!

If this is the way we are going we are doomed as a nation.  New York and California will take the lead in the downfall.

http://www.twincities.com/loca.....de-ipad-each-student

Quoted from TakingItBack

New York and California will take the lead in the downfall.

http://www.twincities.com/loca.....de-ipad-each-student

WILL take the lead?  You mean their the major front-runners and there's no chance of anybody catching up with them.

Quoted from CICERO

This is pure silliness.  It isn't the "poverty" creating the "trauma", it's the commercialism of America that tells children that everything they see advertised on TV, on billboards, everything they see in the shopping mall is RIGHTFULLY theirs.  And if they are unable to afford an XBox the Playstation, or whatever the newest toy that "everybody has to have" it is traumatic because of their warped sense of reality that corporate America creates.  The majority of Americans that live in "poverty" is not the abject poverty you see in 3rd world countries. It is American poverty, where we think people wearing second hand Tommy Hilfiger jeans is appalling.

but if they are not theraputized early on anger sets in with ensuing violence caused by the BASEST of human
instinct of which our elected leaders of both political/consumer systems like to fan and enlarge....

create a need and pretend to fill it as they see fit.....

DUMB A$$ES

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Spring thinks they need therapy to help them come to terms with the uncertainties in their lives. But that means paying for therapy for thousands of children.

  

Wow, just wow

Soooo basically he is saying that most kids who live on the hill are mentally ill?  

The Schenectady School systems special ed is overwhelmed and broke, they cannot even give the correct and needed
services to kids who REALLY DO NEED help.

All three of my kids were brought up on the hill and they are just fine thank you. All three have grown up to be
responsible adults, loving and kind and respectful.

Yes life is harder here, wish I had lived elsewhere where they didn't have to see the violence.

But it's the PARENTS job to raise the children, not the schools.

Now with this new superintendant I can see it now, kid needs to be suspended, but wait he/she is poor no need to
suspend its a mental issue.

Once kids are classified with a "mental" issue in school, parents are pressured to get their kids on prescription drugs.

My niece was dxed with Attention Deficit and the school system not happy with my sister who REFUSED to let my niece be given ritalin.

When I worked at Pleasant Valley it was SOOOO sad to see the little kids drugged up, they walked around like little
Zombies  

Quoted from rpforpres

  

Wow, just wow

Soooo basically he is saying that most kids who live on the hill are mentally ill?  

The Schenectady School systems special ed is overwhelmed and broke, they cannot even give the correct and needed services to kids who REALLY DO NEED help.

All three of my kids were brought up on the hill and they are just fine thank you. All three have grown up to be
responsible adults, loving and kind and respectful.

Yes life is harder here, wish I had lived elsewhere where they didn't have to see the violence.

But it's the PARENTS job to raise the children, not the schools.

Now with this new superintendant I can see it now, kid needs to be suspended, but wait he/she is poor no need to
suspend its a mental issue.

Once kids are classified with a "mental" issue in school, parents are pressured to get their kids on prescription drugs.

My niece was dxed with Attention Deficit and the school system not happy with my sister who REFUSED to let my niece be given ritalin.

When I worked at Pleasant Valley it was SOOOO sad to see the little kids drugged up, they walked around like little
Zombies  

You know, 40 years ago, the City had 30 thousand more people living here and quite a fine school system. How ironic that four decades later, the school system is 'overwhelmed' with far less students????

Make all the excuses you want - YOUR SCHOOL SYSTEM SUCKS!!! Why don't you take all the money put aside for teachers lifelong healthcare benefits and pensions and start putting that money into education.

Would like to see how the Super rounds up the kids on free/reduced lunch for their mandatorymeds.

Dolt.

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Would like to see how the Super rounds up the kids on free/reduced lunch for their mandatorymeds.

And thats exactly how it works  

that's what I don't understand....less kids cost more????