To quote New York Senator Bill Perkins “Charter schools came on board with the promise that they could do better for less… No sooner than they became they started advocating for more money…they began advocating to be a part of those public schools, to take over those public schools. So it’s a switcheroo kind of a thing. They came in with one expectation, and now they’re in the public schools creating all kinds of chaos. And the Mayor is closing down schools, with the plan of putting in these charter schools. And I think it’s outrageous that they’re getting paid so much.” 

Private corporations who are only looking to make money are running our schools. Does anyone else find anything wrong with this statement?

Which company the schools actually go to is still undecided. Some ideas that are floating around include having “Achievement Networks” and decisions about schools would be made within each. These decisions would be about curricula, discipline, staffing, supplies, etc. As retired teacher, education activist, and writer said Lisa Haver said in a Daily News article “District officials have admitted that this new system would do nothing to lessen the deficit…. A bidding process would determine who controls each network. Anyone may be chosen: former district personnel, charter school operators, corporations, or politicians including State Rep. Dwight Evans, who last year bullied one charter school behind closed doors in order to override the choice of parents at Martin Luther King High School. How have we arrived at a point where the public school system can be auctioned off to the lowest bidder?”

I am strongly against the privatization of public schools. After doing even further research, I learned that when a school becomes privatized, they no longer have to be transparent to the taxpayers who support it. They don’t have to release the salaries of the CEO’s or staff, do not have release whether or not they have the required level of certified teachers, and do not have to say whether or not those teachers are even teaching the subject they are certified in.

In some ways, I wish I could talk to the SRC. I would have plenty questions for them. How am I supposed to learn geometry from a certified gym teacher?  How am I supposed to become a member of by global community, and an active, contributing citizen if my government doesn’t value my education? How can I trust the SRC to be a powerful advocate for my education if, as Lisa Haver said, “its policies can be dictated by billionaires with deep pockets and rigid contracts”? 

You can find my bibliography here.

STDs are one of the most dangerous diseases to have. It makes you very sick, and you won’t be able to grow up to have babies because you won’t be able to have intimacy because of the risk of giving the disease to other people. Especially if you are a teenager. One in every four female in the U.S has a case of STD. Between the years of 1997 and 2011 the percentage of teens with STDs jumped a total of 53 percent.

There is a theory for the reason as to why teens get STDs. Children go through puberty earlier because of  better nutrition, and the immature cervix of teenage girls is especially vulnerable to infection. Psychology: Kids with raging hormones think they are invincible and take stupid risks. Sociology: Children who grow up in the inner city take risks because they can’t imagine a decent future. Technology: Better screening detects more STDs. Poverty: A lack of access to medical care means those infected won’t know they have an STD and will continue to spread it. Culture: Casual high school hookups have replaced the romance of dating. The media: Kids are being sexualized in ads, movies and on the Internet. All these reasons can be a possible factor as to why kids get STDs. Or maybe it’s that they weren’t raised with the mindset that we were given by our parents not to have sex and to use a condom when we do.

Personally, when it comes to this topic i blame the parents. It’s supposed to be their job to tell the child to job to tell the child about the dangers of STDs and how they can be prevented. My theory is that the parents of these teenage children with the disease is that they don’t care, or they too have experience with more than one partner. i believe that if parents warn their children and teach them the rights from wrongs in intimacy, the teenage rate of STDs would be a lot shorter.

As I go about with my research i still wonder lots of things about teenage STDs. Why are teenagers more subject to getting affected. How was this disease first discovered, and how is it best treated? These thoughts are going all through my head and want to be answered.

What is Human Trafficking? It’s the form of slavery in which people control and exploit other human beings in order to create a profit.

Why is this a problem? Because until slavery and trafficking is fully abolished, the world is not a free one. Because no matter where the slavery is in the world, our freedom depends on the abolishment of it. Because, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, ‘no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.’

Since my last post, I've taken some time to conduct some research outside of school. As it turns out, 1 out of every 5 people that I interviewed, between the ages of 14 and 18, didn't even know that Human Trafficking was a large world issue.  

Where is Human Trafficking occurring? Everywhere. Almost every single country on the planet is affected in some way by Human Trafficking. This map shows only a segment of the trafficking trade around the world:

            While I was trying to promote my survey, I was also doing more research into the world of social networking and found that many businesses use social networking as a way to raise support, awareness and money. According to a reporter Debbie Miller, when marketers were asked if social networking was important to their business, 62% of them said, “strongly agree” and 28% “agree”. In addition, she made a chart about the pros of social networking in business:

 Hello everyone again I come to you with my 2^nd post on government spending on prisoners vs. students. One of my main issues is the fact that the government gives convicted killers, rapists, kidnappers, etc. health care that a lot of kids in America don’t have and food housing and more opportunities that most kids don’t get. Some new info I picked up is about private prisons. Although they are beneficial to saving money it also has its faults. For starters the security is very bad in some places as it said 3 murderers had escaped before. Also with private prisons they put high profile prisoners in low security places.

This added to my knowledge because although it’s good to use private prisons for financial reasons it is not for safety purposes. It costs less if the government pays a private prison rather than run it themselves. In my opinion safety comes 1^st cause if we aren’t safe than having money means nothing. After we get our security up to protect the people then we can worry about money. Although we can solve the safety issue by just putting low profile prisoners in the private prisons with medium security and leaving the high profile prisoners in the max security prisons. I have an idea that could work but it would take a lot of work and maybe money but the results will benefit us in the long run. 

  What if we built an island like Alcatraz and put all the high profile prisoners and low profile prisoners there with no resources to help them escape and a high wall around the perimeter with sharks swimming around so they wouldn’t try to escape that way. In the long run we would save billions because they wouldn’t have to keep building new prisons and prison cells and also having to pay guards to watch over them. I think this could work if we perfect what my main idea is and if we put the time and effort into it. I wonder if any other people care about this topic as much as I do. I am going to ask teachers and principals if they can help me get in touch with government officials to help this problem get fixed. My bibliography 

• The organization called ACLU which stands for ( American Civil Liberties Union ) brought their first LGBT case in the year of 1936.

• The ACLU is an organization that helps people that are for example Lesbian,Gay,Bisexual, and Transgender. It helps them towards enjoying their constitutional rights of equality, privacy, personal independence, and also freedom of expression.  

• Then, there's this project, the LGBT project that includes the society of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and lastly Transgender and this project was found on the year of 1986.  

• Last but not least, there is plenty of support for the LGBT community and throughout the nation there are over 700 LGBT clubs including in colleges and even on their own college campuses. Which means that people like this are never alone.

1. I don’t like it but, it’s life.
2. I’m cool with that.
3. I look at them the same way I look at others, equality!
4. Equality.
5. I don’t think nothing about them, it’s fine.
6. Aye everybody is on their own.
7. I don’t have a problem with them.
8. It’s okay we need to respect it, we all have the right.
9. Long live homosexuality.
10. Don’t know.
11. I don’t agree with it , because they’ll mess up my kid.
12. I’m not in favor of it because god made both a man and a woman. I’m against it.
13. I believe everyone is titled to their own opinion.
14. If they want to be like that let them be, it’s not you.
15. I think it’s just people who are born different, with a different sexuality then others. They should be able to have all the rights that straight people have no matter what.
16. I say leave them alone. They’re people too.
17. I think it is a touchy topic, schools need to be more prepared to support students who might be/might not be sure....whether or not people support it, we need to support the children.

            In case you’re just visiting my blog for the first time, I will reiterate what this entire blog is focused around, the current, and rising murder rate in Philadelphia. As said in my previous post, this is a serious epidemic for any Philadelphia citizen, and everyone should be aware of the danger that people everywhere are faced with from most of the useless violence that surrounds them.

Now since my last blog entry I have done some more research in my local area about one of the major safety precautions that each block, in each neighborhood, in each part of the city should have; a neighborhood watch. Through my research, and investigation I have found out that my personal area does have a neighborhood watch. But honestly, what is the point of having a neighborhood watch, if they will not do much to keep the neighborhood safe. For example, after talking with my teacher Ms. Dunn, and her telling me that not only does her area have a neighborhood watch, but also they are almost always on duty, and they are well known in the area, I realized that I didn’t even know if my area had a neighborhood watch. That in itself obviously shows a lack of work being done when most people in the neighborhood doesn’t even know their neighborhood watch exists. Even when going to my mother, she didn’t know that we had a neighborhood watch. I had to go about 4 doors down from my house before one person even said that we do.

With this realization that my own block doesn’t have an active neighborhood watch, but doesn’t have that much violence, it led me to guess that some of the areas in Philadelphia that are much more violent most likely do not have any kind of neighborhood watch, and I think that could make a major difference if these areas were to get one. I personally believe that a certain area is not bad, it is those few people in that area that are bad, that cause an entire area to be stereotyped as a “bad” neighborhood. With a neighborhood watch, these areas would have more of a grip on those people that give that area a bad name, and in turn could eventually change the reputation of that area.

I truly believe that Philadelphia is not a completely violent city. Even though it has had an increasingly high murder rate, Philadelphia as a whole population is not to blame. It is that of the individuals who cause the violence’s fault. These individuals are the ones who give Philadelphia this reputation, and the number of these individuals could be lowered if neighborhood watch existed in EVERY neighborhood.

Although I have learned a lot, there are a few things I am still left wondering about when it comes to the Philadelphia violence. I am still wondering where exactly in Philadelphia are they’re the most homicides. I am also wondering what exactly the Mayor has been trying to do to stop, or try and drop the homicide rate in Philadelphia.

My bibliography available here.

Now since you know what bullying is, I am going to tell you why I want you to know about it. I am telling you because most people don’t think about what they are saying to others. I been bullied and I don’t like it. Now I think about what I say to people and I try to say pleasant things to everyone. I try and say "hey" to everyone I know. I do all of this because you never know if you made someones day by just saying "hi" or "you look nice today."

I have been bullied in the past. I was one of the tallest girls in my school, so people would make fun of me for it. But what they didn’t know was that it hurt me. I explained this to adults and to hear that they understood, made me stronger. But most kids can’t do that. They might think that people really don’t like them when it's not true and they will, most likely, hurt themselves. I think that bullying is not the right way to go in today's society. If your reading this then you should do something about it. Be kind to people and think about what you say to people. This could be happening to any one you love.