VIEWPOINTS A8 • BOONE COMMUNITY RECORDER • NOVEMBER 5, 2015
COMMUNITY
RECORDER
Nancy Daly, ndaly@communitypress.com, 578-1059
EDITORIALS | LETTERS | COLUMNS | CH@TROOM
Cincinnati.com/northernkentucky
Why consider adopting during National Adoption Month What do Steve Jobs, Babe Ruth, Eric Clapton and Eleanor Roosevelt have in common? All were adopted. November is National Adoption Month, a time to think about the opportunities to adopt or foster a child without a current home. In Kentucky there are currently 7,607 children without a permanent home. Nationally, the last Federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis reported 415,000 kids in foster care with 108,000 eagerly awaiting to be adopted. We have come a long way as
a society since the orphan trains of the 1800s relocated thousands of kids from the east coast to towns Donna throughout the Bloemer U.S. and Canada. Back then, COMMUNITY RECORDER GUEST families were COLUMNIST not necessarily vetted. An orphan could wind up in a worse situation than the one from which their woes began.
Today, single individuals and families work with me to either foster or adopt a child. The process is easy. If you are at least 21 years old, financially stable and in good physical and mental health, you could be eligible to adopt. The process involves 30 hours of pre-service preparation training. It may take six to nine months for the approval process. Foster parents may receive a child shortly after approval. For adoption placements, the process may take a bit longer.
This year, National Adoption Month focuses on older adoptions. Think about the adoption of high schoolerturned- pro- football- star Michael Oher in the movie The Blind Side. He was lucky enough to be adopted by a loving family before he turned 18, the time when children in the system “age out” and are sent out on their own to fend for themselves. I encourage every family to consider sharing their lives with an adoptee. I can’t guarantee that they will grow up to
be a Steve Jobs or Babe Ruth, but I do know from experience that the process has brought joy to thousands of youngsters as well as to the adults who unselfishly open their homes and hearts to needy children. For additional information, phone the law office of Donna Bloemer at 859-344-1875. Donna Bloemer is a Fort Mitchell attorney whose practice focuses on family law issues; adoptions; wills and trusts; probate and other general civil matters; personal injury actions; and criminal law.
Those ‘readiness’ rates Transit offers our community might not be so hot more than just rides The 2015 public school accountability reports are out, and even Kentucky education’s staunchest supporters admit the test data do not look so hot. At best, the academic test performances for the state’s elementary and middle schools are “flat.” The testing news is particularly bad for Kentucky’s largest racial minority group. White-minus-black achievement gaps grew in every area tested between 2012 and 2015 on both the EXPLORE (Grade 8) and PLAN (Grade 10) collegereadiness tests. The only news worth cheering about concerns the state’s rising high school graduation rate and the proportion of those graduates who supposedly are ready for either college or a career. But, could even this cheering be misguided? The state’s official College and/or Career Readiness Rates (CCR), as the reported statistics should properly be labeled, came under serious scrutiny in a December 2014 report from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission’s Office of Education Accountability (OEA). The OEA’s report provides disturbing evidence that increases in the CCR are overstated. The OEA points out that the CCR increases mostly come from the college readiness part of the calculation, and most of those increases actually come from two college placement tests, the KYOTE and COMPASS. By comparison, improvement on the ACT college entrance test has been modest, at best. The problem is that college freshmen who only qualify as college ready thanks to the KYOTE or COMPASS produce low GPAs. The OEA’s study examines a total of 12,164 Kentucky public college freshmen in the spring of 2013 who were declared college ready upon graduating
Richard G. Innes COMMUNITY RECORDER GUEST COLUMNIST
from high school. Of that group, 2,696 students – 22 percent of the total – posted GPAs below 2.0 at the end of their freshman year. Given their low college GPAs, those students really didn’t
look ready. Thus, actual college results indicate the CCR numbers Kentucky’s educators are touting appear to be misleadingly inflated. Even worse, thousands of Kentucky students got set up for college failure. Told they would not have to take remedial courses, these students didn’t get the extra help they clearly needed. Educators also cheer Kentucky’s official 2015 high school graduation rate of 87.9 percent, which sounds impressive – until you apply even those inflated CCR numbers to those graduations. Doing this reveals that only 58.7 students from each group of 100 students who entered the ninth grade in 2011-12 as part of what would become the Class of 2015 actually received a meaningful education that prepared them for either college or a living-wage career. The rest either dropped out of school or only got a largely empty piece of paper during their commencement ceremony. In effect, even using the state’s own inflated numbers, Kentucky’s “Effective High School Graduation Rate” for 2015 is only 58.7 percent. Hopefully, no one will want to cheer about that. Richard G. Innes, who lives in Villa Hills, is the staff education analyst at the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s first and only free-market think tank.
ABOUT LETTERS AND COLUMNS We welcome your comments on editorials, columns, stories or other topics important to you in the Recorder. Include your name, address and phone number(s) so we may verify your letter. Letters of 200 or fewer words and columns of 500 or fewer words have the best chance of being published. All submissions may be edited for length, accuracy and clarity. Deadline: Noon Friday E-mail: kynews@communitypress.com Fax: 859-283-7285 U.S. mail: See box below Letters, columns and articles submitted to the Recorder may be published or distributed in print, electronic or other forms.
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Sustainability can be a daunting topic; it is a concept that is defined in many different ways and used in even more contexts. But in the context of the Northern Kentucky region, the definition is quite simple: sustainability is the balance of a healthy population, a vibrant environment, and a thriving economy. As a sustainability practitioner, I find that sustainability or “being green” is oftentimes thought to be synonymous with recycling or energy reduction. While these are truly integral to being a practical steward of resources, the reality is that sustainability has a much wider scope. At Northern Kentucky University, as the sustainability manager, I am responsible for fostering a campus-wide culture of sustainability, which includes annual reporting of our institutional greenhouse gas emissions. A big part of our carbon footprint is commuting miles, making alternative transportation options such as TANK, ZipCar, biking and ridesharing very important to the university. Last month, NKU was announced as one of 10 inaugural “transit friendly destinations,” a program launched by Green Umbrella, Metro, TANK, Agenda 360 and Skyward. NKU was honored to receive this recognition because of our commitment to offering alternative transportation opportunities to our students, faculty and staff. Not only has NKU committed to alternative
but the transportation, Northern Kentucky region has as well. Skyward, the engine and the engineer behind Northern Kentucky’s plan for economic growth, has identified the expansion, construction and support of efficient public transit corriTess Phinney dors as a key strategy in their jobs and business focus COMMUNITY RECORDER GUEST area. COLUMNIST alternative Offering transportation is only a part of the equation. As employees, students and community members, we need to take advantage of this opportunity to catalyze a culture of sustainability in our region by utilizing alternative transportation. Be a part of this movement! Change your commute to work or school by trying TANK or ZipCar. Challenge your family and friends to bike and walk instead of driving. And encourage your employer, school or organization to call TANK and become a transit friendly destination. This is an exciting time to be a part of a region that has the potential to be a model for other communities as we continue to develop a network of transit friendly destinations. Tess Phinney is sustainability manager at Northern Kentucky University.
Parent can be fined, jailed if child is truant With the new school year well under way, I thought it may be helpful to discuss the issue of compulsory school attendance. Under Kentucky law, every child between the age of 6 and 16 is required to be enrolled and attend a public or private school unless their physical or mental condition prevents or renders inadvisable attendance at school or application to study. An exemption is also granted to someone under 16 who has already graduated from high school. However, a local board of education may adopt a districtwide policy to change the age from 16 years old to 18 years old. Typically, a child between the ages of 16 and 18 is permitted to drop out of school only with written permission from a parent or guardian and after a conference and counseling with school officials. Any person over the age of 18 who has not completed high school can drop out without written permission of a parent or guardian. Under Kentucky law, a parent, guardian or custodian of a child is legally responsible for any violation by the child of the Compulsory School Attendance Laws. Under Kentucky law, a parent, guardian or other custodian is required to see that their children comply with Kentucky’s compulsory attendance laws and any parent, guardian or custodian who intentionally fails to comply with such laws can be fined up to $100 for a first offense, up to $250 for a second offense, and up to 90 days in jail, and up to a $250 fine for a third offense. We often have cases in the Campbell District Court where the children are charged with being habitual truants and the parents are 228 Grandview Drive, Fort Mitchell, KY 41017 654 Highland Ave., Fort Thomas, KY 41075 phone: 283-0404 email: kynews@communitypress.com web site: cincinnati.com/northernkentucky
charged with failing to make their children go to school. Our local district and family court judges take these cases very seriously. It is rare that a parent can come up with a reason to avoid fines or jail time for not making sure that their chilSteven J. Franzen dren attend school. Under Kentucky law, any COMMUNITY child who has been absent RECORDER GUEST COLUMNIST from school without a valid excuse for three or more days or tardy without a valid excuse for three or more days is considered a truant. Any child who has been reported as a truant two or more times is considered a habitual truant. Unless in a school district that mandates compulsory attendance until age 18, a 16- or 17-year-old who drops out of school or is declared to be academically deficient due to poor grades, will be reported to the Kentucky Department of Transportation to have their driver’s license revoked. This provision is to discourage students from dropping out of school. Frequently, when students discover this consequence, they change their mind about quitting school. I hope this information is interesting and helpful. If you have any topics you would like to have covered in this column, please contact my office by e-mail at countyattorney@campbellcountyky.org, by phone at 491-7700 or by regular mail addressed to 319 York St., Newport, KY 41071. Steven J. Franzen is county attorney of Campbell County. Boone Community Recorder Editor Nancy Daly ndaly@communitypress.com, 578-1059 Office hours: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday See page A2 for additional contact information.