Fort Payne Middle School

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I have had direct experience with 3 children from our family in the Fort Payne City Schools. I thought that maybe if switching between schools it would get better. This last child is now being homeschooled. I am an educated African American, my wife comes from a Honduran family (born and raised in America). Our kids have darker skin and a Hispanic look they have never spoken anything other than English. I could never understand why my children were put in a Language Learner program with non-English speakers. A friend at work finally explained that the school gets an abundance of additional monies (per student) if they can enter your non-white child Hispanic looking child into a Language Learners program. WHAT!?!??????None of my children ever brought home homework, but my wife and I could never understand what kind of education they were getting. We trusted the system until I found out about the extra funding. So we are opting for homeschool.Now that we homeschool we know. THEY WERE GETTING NOTHING! My 5th grader doesn't know about rhyming words, place values, or ANY American history. They were never been enrolled in a science class, but seem to know how to draw and color skulls for the Day of The Dead and Mexican flags for Cinco de Mayo. Reading skills in all my children are greatly lacking even though all the children were straight 'A' students. All of them, including my youngest can tell you who Pancho Villa, Frida, and numerous other Mexican people are. Unfortunately, they have never heard of George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony, or Benjamin Franklin.Work colleagues tell me this is normal, but I served my country, and find this to be a disgusting state of our country when I children learn more about other countries than their own.The school system is setting our children up for failure and they know it, they accept it, and it's terribly disturbing to me as a Black American man attempting to ensure my children are prepared for their future.