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We parents want to keep our children safe from anything and everything. That's always our biggest worry. When I was raising our children, keeping my daughters safe meant showing them how to cross the street and how not to speak to strangers. But, fast forward to the 21st century, and keeping children safe comes with a whole set of digital challenges, besides the analog challenges of crossing streets safely. Smart TVs, tablets, computers, and smartphones can consume vast amounts of a young person's time when we allow that to happen. However, what concerns me most is the quality of the material available on all those digital devices. We don't want our children watching inappropriate content or playing violent games on their smart devices, do we? That's the rationale behind controlling our children's screen times. So, here are a couple of tips on making that happen.

Create healthy screen habits.

Children are curious. Insatiably so. They want answers. They want to explore. And they want to have fun doing it. Create healthy screen habits by configuring your child's smart devices to be tools for learning and exploration. That will open up vast worlds for them to explore. The kid who dreams of building a robot can find tons of information about robotics. The same with the arts, sports, literature, languages - you name it, her smart device will have it. The trick is to configure her smart devices so that she can only access the good stuff, not the

Stories about parents upset with CRT, vaccine mandates, virtual teaching, and, well, you name it, just about anything you can think of in our public schools have brought home the essential difference between public schools and private schools. Of course, most public schools have to cater to a large, in some cases, a vast constituency of parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers, unions, and politicians. But, on the other hand, private schools only have to satisfy the families that opt to send their children to them.

As much as possible, let's compare apples to apples as we look at how public schools and private schools cope with the incredible number of pressure points involved in running a school in the second decade of the 21st-century.

This video from PBS explains critical race theory.

A public school district's mission

Constituency

Generally, a public school district serves the municipality in which it is located. The exception occurs when several towns band together to create a regional school district. Thus, public schools have to be responsive to the community's needs. They also have to follow all applicable federal, state, and local laws and regulations that pertain to their operation.

Funding

Most of a public school district's funding comes from real estate taxes levied by the municipality. Most school district budgets are presented, discussed, and voted on in the first four months of the calendar year. If the taxpayers disapprove

I have written about the issue of over-protective parents recently. The subject intrigues me because I have always wondered what drives parents to be that way. Why would any parent want to disempower their child? After all, that's one of the downsides of being over-protective. Unfortunately, I can only speak authoritatively from my own experience raising two daughters and two sons. In this article, I will refer to and quote more knowledgeable people to explain what's involved with raising bubble-wrapped children.

How we raised our children

We were always concerned with our children's safety. Fortunately, the communities where we lived were safe. Back in the 70s and 80s, we didn't have to worry about social media and video games. As a classical musician, I recall being appalled at some of the popular music my children listened to. But they had caring, experienced teachers in the private schools they attended. We provided enrichment activities including horse-riding, music lessons, summer sessions at talented and gifted schools. Looking back at those times, I must confess that I probably would have been a helicopter father, that is, if my dear wife had let me act that way. But she didn't. She never missed a trick. Nothing escaped her when it came to her children. Absolutely nothing. Her secret was to let her kids make mistakes. I remember when our eldest daughter came in 30 minutes after she was supposed to be home. Her mother was waiting patiently and greeted a

How to Keep Teens Safe While Traveling Alone

Traveling in uncertain times is a challenge for most of us adults.So, imagine how many dangers, real and imagined, a young person will face when she travels alone.

• Increased Anxiety: Teens may face heightened anxiety due to the uncertainty of travel conditions, such as changing health guidelines and travel restrictions.

Scholarship Tax Credit ProgramsSchool choice has been a fact in American K-12 education since 1989. That year the State of Wisconsin passed a voucher program which aimed to help students from low-income families in Milwaukee. Since then 39 states have established school choice programs. Depending on the state, school choice programs have expanded to include educational savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, and individual tax credit/deduction which parents can use to send their children to a private school.

Most states also allow parents to transfer their children from underperforming public schools to higher-performing public schools. In addition, many states have permitted the establishment of charter schools as one more alternative to an underperforming public school. Because allocating taxpayer funding to educational resources other than public schools is controversial, numerous legal challenges have been filed. Depending on the state, you will see a variety of workarounds including the afore-mentioned educational savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, and individual tax credits/deductions.

According to the American Federation for Children, the following states now have some form of funding for school choice program. In fact, several states offer several educational choice options. For the latest information https://www.federationforchildren.org/

Other resources include Noodle which has assembled a useful to the various educational choice