Our tax dollars put to good use!!

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Hispanic Activists Call for One Day Boycott

SANTA ANA — The Santa Ana Unified School District is raffling off a free color TV to students who ignore an economic boycott by Hispanics and instead show up for class Friday (12/12/03).
Hispanic activists -- including a former member of the Santa Ana Unified school board -- called for the one-day boycott after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a repeal of a law that would have granted driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants.

School districts lose funding when students don't attend classes, up to $40 a student per day. The boycott could have a significant impact on the Santa Ana school district, where 92 percent of the students are Hispanic, said the district's Lucy Araujo-Cook.

"Obviously, we want our students at school, and if somebody is specifically asking parents to keep students home, that's a concern to us," she said.

She said the raffle was planned before the boycott was announced. "We actually decided to do some attendance initiatives months ago," Araujo-Cook said.

"Typically we have high absences before the holidays and I know there are people encouraging parents to keep their children home tomorrow," she said.

Another television will be raffled off on Dec. 19, the last day before the Christmas break, and still another will be given away in January, she said.

"This is the first of numerous attendance initiatives that we're going to implement because when we improve our attendance here in Santa Ana Unified by 1 percent point, it generates an additional $1.7 million," she said.

Fliers detailing the raffle will go home with students this afternoon, she said, and calls will go to each student's home through the automated calling system.

David Smollar of the Capistrano Unified School District said that each student absence carries a cost.

"It's $40 per student per day," he said.

The district, one of the largest in Orange County, has not adopted a specific program district-wide to discourage absences, but individual schools with Hispanic majorities have been monitoring the situation, Smollar said.

Silvia Pule, principal of San Juan Elementary School in San Juan

Capistrano, said recorded messages about the importance of attending school tomorrow will go out over the school's automated calling system this afternoon. The school recently held a fund-raiser that generated $500, she said. Pule said she has emphasized the importance of parents sending their children to school tomorrow by pointing out that just 10 students staying home would nearly "negate an entire night's fund-raising."

Nativo Lopez, a former Santa Ana Unified School District trustee and head of Hermandad Latinoamericana in Santa Ana, has been credited with coming up with the idea of the boycott, but he disagreed.

"It came from the people themselves," he said. "They asked Hermandad Latinoamericana to lead it. We're leading by obliging."

Lopez said he sees no reason why children should not take part in the effort, and he disagreed with his former district's television offer. "It's pretty sad they need to entice children with material objects instead of teaching them to defend their rights," Lopez said.

Araujo-Cook said incentives are common practice in the schools. Business partners often offer coupons for things like free ice-cream sundaes for children with perfect attendance records.

Lopez said tomorrow's boycott -- on the same day as the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe -- "is just the beginning."

"We've seen that political means are ineffective," he said. The Hispanic community will be urged to engage in a series of "non- cooperation and non-participation" activities, he said.

Yawn.

If the illegals are DEMANDING a free education, I'm not going to bitch when they don't show up.

Education is not a right.  It's a -privilege-.

Nonparticipation and noncooperation?  GO AWAY!  We don't need or want your lazy type here.  

Forcing those who neither desire to be educated nor have the capacity only ruins it for everybody else. Fuck 'em. Let them stay home.

AGreed, and it's one some people are too dumb to understand the importance of.

However, if the school district loses money because pupils are staying home, then all the students suffer, right?

WTF do they punish the school, rather than the parents?



Erm... that's kinda the point aint it, the illegals dont have those rights, and driving is certainly a privilege, not a right.

I dont know, apathetic bloody planet.

/Phil

Welcome to the United States of the Offended.

Fuck'em.  

I don't know how the members in Kalifornication can stand it.  I'd rather live under a bridge in Texas then live in a manson in Kali under the current political conditions.  Such a shame that a BEAUTIFUL state is so FUBAR.

What he said, except without the bridge bit.

This is wrong on so many levels:

1. School districts are rewarded for the number of warm bodies they can attract, instead of for literacy, scholastic achievement or graduation;

2. Schools are trivializing the importance of education by "rewarding" students for attending,

3. Parents are holding their kids' educations hostage for political reasons,

4. Some parents actually believe that driver's licenses for illegal aliens is a good idea, and

5. The students will inherent these warped values and ideas.

Thank God for pivate schools and home schooling!

I attended a highschool that used attendence incentives.

If you had perfect attendence you had the option of skipping your  midterm and final exams.

Not many kids skipped school.

how about we just offer to deport those that don't show up for class. Would solve a lot of problems right up front.

mike

In support of the boycott I wont be buying anything from Mexicans today.  I reserve the right to arrest them though.  

BTW;
If my Mexican partner arrests a Mexican on this day of boycotting Mexicans, does it create a black hole?

Time to send in the Hells Angels, like when the Viet Nam peace protestors got nasty. I saw it on the history channel. Let them help encourage them all to, "make a run to the boarder."[):)][:D]