In a surprise move made public yesterday, the Department of Education announced startling new policies to combat what is being called an academic epidemic. “With devastating results to school board budgets across the country, school administrators are being forced to adopt sometimes unorthodox methods” said DE spokeswomen Jane Stewart. “To that end, we are proud to introduce our new team of homeless hallway teaching tutors.”
Initially considered controversial, the government is widely being hailed for this new initiative as it takes effect. “For too long, our country has been plagued by understaffed teachers unions, leading ultimately to more student dropouts. Everyone knows high school dropouts are more likely to end up living on the streets. “With Homeless Hallway Teaching Tutors we’re trying to fix both problems” explains Stewart, who then explained how the program works.
Due to strict union regulations, schools are prohibited from hiring sub par teachers, but in a clever maneuver, the DE has sidestepped this rule in favor of volunteer tutors. By bringing in the homeless to work for free, street people who otherwise wouldn’t have anywhere to go are allowed to roam inside the comfort of the school halls, not unlike the students themselves. Though not as trained a professional teachers, these hobos of the heartland are able to supervise many programs that previous supervision had to be cut due to funding cutbacks.
Opponents to this new and unorthodox tutor program claim that the United States as a country could be doing a lot better of a job educating our children than entrusting them to adults who know next to nothing about para-educational development theory. “Actually we’ve found that there is quite a bit the children can learn from people who have slept under a bridge,” added spokeswoman Stewart.
With no other ideas in mind, the Department of Education hopes their new program will prove to be a worthwhile use of school space and homeless people. According to the text of the policy, no homeless person who “appears or claims to be under the influence of any substance, legal or illegal, that causes them to act in an unusual manner.”
“The screening process for these positions is, of course, rigorous,” Joel Keizer of the Laytonville County School District in California explains. As superintendent for this rural county, Keizer is working with the DE to open the first Homeless Hallway Teaching Tutors in several of his schools. “We can’t afford for our teachers to spend too much time, however, on approving the homeless applicants. “It will take a little time for us to find that balance between letting drunks into our schools and being so picky that the program fails.”
