Fwd: Living in Oakwood

[Amy E Jones]

FYI: The following letter is for anyone to read; very informative and concerning

William Slattery <william....@wright.edu> wrote:

Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:50:02 -0400
From: William Slattery <william....@wright.edu>
Subject: Living in Oakwood
To: Amy E Jones <amyelno...@yahoo.com>

Amy- Hi and hope all is well. Need to share something with you. First, Maritza is home and doing great.
Next, living in Oakwood is not so great. Sorry for the long email but just to fill you  in:

We talked with the Oakwood schools in April, who then recommended, without ever testing nor seeing Maritza, that we place her in a private school for a couple of years before signing her up in Oakwood schools. Needless to say we are very disappointed in their comments towards us. Not only was it unprofessional, but not welcoming. The phrase, "Well I guess if you do sign her up, we would then have to take her", the tone still rings in my ears. Sharon lane came to mind when she would tell me the insensitivity of schools.

We have since April, contacted many nearby pre-schools and were placed on a waiting list. I called them up last Friday to see where we stand currently. We are currently between numbers 5 and 7 on the list of all the pre-schools.
So there is realistically no hope that 5 to 7 kids would drop out and that we would be called, and some weren't too thrilled to have a non-English speaker join them. Holy Angels pre-school suggested another place would be better and thought that her lack of English skills was a "problem". So much for Christian charity.  So we have no where to place her in Sept. We are only left with placing her at St.Paul's Spanish immersion class, which meets everyday, she gets no services and only academics and costs $2500. She knows Spanish, she needs to learn English, hence that is why American kids are placed in Spanish immersion classes, to learn a new language. I don't know where the thinking is that placing her in a Spanish class is going to help her learn English or keeping her out of school for years is going to make her ready for school when she is ten or placing her with 3 years olds is going to be beneficial.
 
Looks like playgroup and library hours is all we can do. But that has to much inconsistency and we need permanence in her life. What a shame. Looks like the Oakwood schools are an excellent school system for those children who are white, but not for those that are not. Maritza has speech and language delays and needs a speech teacher to help her pronounced her letters. The longer the wait, the more difficult it will be to correct this. Oakwood schools said she could not take speech until 4-5 years from now. I have no idea where Kathy Bartolo, head of Special Services, came up with this number.

I wonder how things are going to change now that the "complexion" of Oakwood has changed so much in the last year. Looks like my kids are deemed as part of changing the moral fabric of this once pristine community, along with the "darkies, Jews and mentally retarded people," (as stated in the Oakwood Register over the last few months). It is really sad when a community calls for a meeting to discuss the changes in "complexion" in their community. Yes, Amy, they had a meeting! "It was so much better living here years ago", was the mantra, you know, "before those with another complexion moved in." Morally, we cannot continue to live here. The comments from a few neighbors that they now live in the "little Guatemala" section is intolerable. Our children are gorgeous...and so are we. Such a shame, such beautiful homes and parks...with such ugly people living in them. Never saw this coming. We lived here for 3 years back in the mid-90s. Maybe we were so wrapped up with work that we never noticed. It is been one heck of a year and we value life and happiness too much to worry about this shit. We will be moving back to YS in the next few months. you can share this with whomever, people need to know what type of town this is.

Mucho besos and hugs, Marie and Bill

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