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I read the public message from the state program, and it does indeed say there's a mandatory home visit, though I think in this teacher's case she was not delivering the news as intended, because the material goes on about cultural responsiveness and learning about the home culture of the child and building family connections and whatnot. She offered to have me talk to her "manager," whoever that is (she is the only licensed teacher, working in a daycare that is not like that), but I said to just send me an email for now while I consult about our schedule.
I could sort of imagine why it might be a thing, but, also, it is absolutely not culturally responsive to... American culture. And I am in America.
I’m with CertainlyWorse here — is this a mandatory program you have to send your children to for public education, or is this like a preschool with public subsidy or something?
I was in preschool before kindergarten, it was a white house run by a religious group. We played with blocks and there was naptime. No one did a welfare check on my parents’ house. Or if they did, my parents never mentioned it.
Edit: I looked it up, I guess this is a Head Start thing, and it’s mandatory for receiving the funding. It’s true that in America a teacher coming to your house is considered impolite, but the other thing about America is that surveillance of welfare recipients is normalized. There’s no “manager” who can override the home visit requirements. The Head Start program absolutely insists on it.
All the nonsense, as CertainlyWorse puts it, is obviously a welfare check figleaf, it’s transparently so. This isn’t a “black culture” difference thing, unless you count “being a recipient of federal social program funding” as a part of black culture.
What this particular thing sounds like is you’re accepting subsidized pre-K, which is oriented towards low-income families and designed to get children who might not make it to school at all to attend.
You don’t have to explain your financial situation, and I don’t judge anyone for taking advantage of resources in place. But I guess I’m a little surprised that you’re putting your kids in a program that my immediate mental association with, even before looking it up, was poor families while balking at the hoops that US welfare programs put poor families through, which suggests an unfamiliarity with the welfare system that Head Start hews close to. Is choosing a private program for pre-K not an option for you?
Edit 2: Is this actually a private pre-K after all? I’ve read some more and it’s possible that the pre-K you’re applying to also takes money from Head Start, and for reasons that I can presume rhyme with “equity” and “we did research on poor families and it helped”, some pre-Ks apply the same home visit rules to private pay families as to ones receiving the subsidy. That would explain the faintly ridiculous situation. But I don’t know that they’re going to bend it for you, even if that is the case.
It might be worthwhile to find another program, but I know childcare is scarce.
No, not really.
For context, I live in New Mexico, which is full of poor people and oil revenue. I had forgotten until I looked it up just now that it produces more than four times as much oil as Alaska, though still half as much as Texas. Unlike Alaska, which gives people money directly, New Mexico invests in various forms of welfare for all, so median income families qualify for pregnancy and early childhood medicaid with no fuss (I was shocked, this is worth tens of thousands of dollars per baby, and I just uploaded a couple of forms, and in the cases of the babies, the hospital uploaded the forms for me). They have a bunch of nice hispanic American ladies (many from the days when the territory literally belonged to Spain) who run nice warm daycares. All the normal daycares are now state funded (with no copay as of a year or so ago), and they have the pre-K program as an optional add-on with more curriculum, or they'll instead pay for regular daycare for four year olds, whatever the individual place decides on doing, which has also been, in my experience, fine. Finding daycare for a 1 year old and a 4 year old at the same time and the same establishment is the main impediment, which has worked out surprisingly well.
This situation has resulted in having a third child, where in another state we probably wouldn't have. As a member of the lower middle class, I like it a lot. If someone institutes low fuss UBI, it will probably be here. And it's democratic without being all that progressive, on account of all the influential people who's parents or grandparents were ranchers, so in general I like it. Also, I didn't save for a house at all, or even think of owning a house, and then a nice local organization said that, yes, we can buy a house, and just led us through exactly how to do that, then sent a non-commissioned realtor who also got up on our roof to show us how to fix the swamp cooler and stuck his hand down the food processor to fish out some broken glass that was inside.
I was more caught off guard by being called up suddenly, out of the blue.
Interesting.
Unfortunately my research seems to suggest that states who universalized state-run daycare and pre-K, such as New Mexico, imported the "two home visits a year" formula from Head Start, and it was brought up suddenly and without asking because it's required by the state. It's a bureaucratic thing, not a cultural difference. And of course like every fad in education they've got a zillion studies proving that it's the greatest thing since the alphabet, and nobody in the education-industrial complex wants to disagree with "research." Especially not in such a way that would provide more autonomy to parents.
I'm no libertarian by any means -- state funding handed out like candy to families approximates my own political preferences -- but the libertarian critique of state programs like this always includes the caveat emptor that taking the state's money makes you the state's servant, and mandatory intrusion into your private life is what comes with the territory of state-run social programs, even if the state has been nice enough so far as to make its programs easy and non-intrusive. The tax man doesn't politely ask if you might be interested in putting funds into social security, and neither do the state education agents politely ask if you might be interested in a home visit.
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People do often seem to say that crime is pretty high in New Mexico, though, especially around the large towns and cities (and especially around Albuquerque). Are you very rural?
Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard it about parts of Chicago as well, and in both places, I don't drive with the windows down or leave my car for large stretches of time or walk alone, and so on.
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Things must be pretty bad for them to mandate something like that. I'd be curious to investigate how this mandatory visit came to be. Is the state program voluntary?
This sounds like complete nonsense made to be a figleaf for a welfare check. I can't see a teacher flipping out over the importance of 'learning about the home culture of the child' and deciding to die on that hill. They could figure that out over a half hour parent and teacher discussion in their office.
I don't clearly remember how things went down with my previous child, but I think they suggested meeting at my house, I suggested meeting at the school, and she pretty much immediately agreed.
The program itself is voluntary, and my older daughter liked it, so I figured to do it again. They have a bit more curriculum than the regular preschool, which is also completely state funded and exists in the same building. I'm not sure how much more, actually, since the regular program is also run by a large national daycare chain and has official stations and activities. I think it's somewhat based on Head Start, which specialized in teaching poor children with parents who would give excuses about not having transportation to parent teacher conferences or something. I'm not sure about the welfare check side of things, I think it's illegal to enter a home under false pretenses, but maybe they do try to get more district resources by finding all the potential IEP kids or families who want extra services or something. The public pre-Ks here do turn some families away, but are explicitly required to accept all children with disabilities.
Perhaps I'll make the appointment. I was mostly put off by how she kept arguing with me about how extremely REQUIRED it was in an annoying and unwelcoming way, and the short notice.
Yeah, it sounds like it was how the approach was made, which I completely understand. This reminds me of something that happened to me recently. Weird slice of life story incoming..
I rent and had the real estate agent ring me midweek at 5pm saying that the owner wanted to come over to fix a light at 9am the next day. I obviously denied that request, but knowing the owner is literally probably around 60-70 IQ and wasn't being malicious (I've met him before and he basically needs his wife to manage his life for him) I agreed to allow him over the day after.
The Real Estate Agent apologised and we had a bit of a chuckle over it in the end. We've both had to deal with all sorts of strange antics from the owner in the past (not helped by the fact that his Filipino wife is a financially ruthless would-be slumlord and has to be reminded of the tenant laws in our first world country), and they're more on my side rather than the owner's. They consider the couple more trouble than they're worth as clients and have threatened to drop them more than once.
The owner did actually come over to fix the light, but he came with a middle aged friend (which is his usual modus operandi; I've never seen him unescorted). They had to go to the hardware store to get the supplies they needed and the whole drama took up more of my time than I would have liked, as I wasn't going to let them wander around my home without keeping an eye on them.
At the end of the whole thing, the friend asked me how I was at home on a weekday and what I did for a living. My first instinct was to tell him it was none of his fucking business how I spend my time, as he seemed to have presumed that I was unemployed (probably because I hadn't mowed the front lawn in a while). I told him I worked from home in a professional role and he seemed genuinely surprised.
Anyway, I was glad to see the back of them. I was a bit cranky until my girlfriend calmed me down, pointing out the guy's age. I just didn't like people coming into my home and making judgments on how I live my life, no matter how old they are. The PTSD from this incident probably makes me upset on your behalf haha.
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