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When my son was in second grade, he came home from school with a lollipop. I was afraid he might have taken candy from a stranger, so I inquired as to where he had gotten it. "My teacher," was his response. "Were you really a good boy in school today?" I asked. "Nah, he replied, it was for my giving that present to the teacher." A few days earlier, at my son urging, I had sent in a charitable gift for the class basket to be auctioned off at the schools annual spaghetti dinner. "Did everyone get a lollipop?" I asked.

"No, Mom mm, only the kids who brought in the present, don't you know Mom mm, you only get what you give."

I felt as if the air had been sucked out of my gut. I envisioned teary eyed children watching the teacher handing out lollipops to those children whose parents had given. I was literally sick at the thought of it. I called my friend, who was the room mother and had a child in the same class and asked her about the lollipops. "I know," she said," I didn't like it either, but it was the teachers call and your son is right," she went on," you do get what you give."

I was appalled then and I still am, years later. It was the impetus to my interest in education law and advocating for student and parent rights. It was also about looking deeper into what really goes on in the public schools, and finding out the guarantee of a free public education is like a warranty on car that's a lemon. There are laws to protect you, but only if you know where to look and have the time to fight the system.

Public education is no longer free education; the trickle down effect of budgetary mismanagement is raining on our children. They are the 'twenty-first century vendors' for our ailing school system. Instead of worrying about the size of our classrooms we need to be concerned about what is going on in those classrooms. What values are we teaching when we award children for selling instead of academic achievement? They are given parties and prizes and being written about for their merchandising, but what about their brains?

For the past two years I have had to keep my son home on running for money day. I say this in a facetious manner because this is another bone in my throat. Running laps for money is a school board approved activity, where the children are taken out of the classroom to run around the track for approximately one hour. Before the event, plaintive pleas for sponsorship money are sent home in the children's homework folders. The suggested donation is

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