<p>I don’t know for sure, but the rumor was she took a swimming class in summer school and got the diploma later in the summer. </p>
<p>I do know that the school board was not about to waive the requirement even when sued (her parents went to court to get an injunction and lost). A school board member told me earlier this year that waivers are only issued in the case of disabilities. </p>
<p>BTW - I am a big fan of the requirement and wish that more schools had such a requirement (assuming they have a pool which most CA high schools do). It’s not that hard of a requirement - stay afloat without touching sides or bottom of pool for 15 minutes and be able to swim 200 yards - just cover the distance - no style points.</p>
<p>Do you mean access to a pool or a pool on the campus grounds? In my area there’s only one school that has a pool, and they want to close it down for financial reasons…</p>
<p>You can teach kids anything when they are little and they pick things up really fast. It doesn’t cost a lot to learn swimming, maybe $100 will do when the timing is right. No need to load them up with books early.</p>
<p>Lots of people don’t have access to swimming pools. I’ve spent my entire life in the hot sunny south. The small town I grew up in had one pool but it was private…had to be a member/pay yearly dues to swim there. Memberships were expensive. Nobody had a pool in their backyard. I currently live in a suburb (pop. 40,000) of a large southern city. There are no public pools here in our town. One elem. sch. used to bus kids to the nearby Y for swim lesson but that got cut.
Our very large city/county school system has more than twenty high schools. Only two of them have pools. </p>
<p>The southern town (pop. about 3,000) I grew up in was heavily populated by African Americans. I went to school with those same kids K-12. We all knew each other really well. None of them (that I knew) could swim. It’s just not in their culture for everyone to learn to swim.
One of S2’s roommates is AA. S2 says he can swim but is not really comfortable in the water, doesn’t really enjoy it.</p>
<p>My kids learned to swim at 3 or4 yrs. old. We were lucky to have a pool in our neighborhood.</p>
<p>That would be a great public service project to teach kids to swim. Or at least to get the word out about existing programs, creating access to pools and instructors and raising funds for those who cannot afford it.</p>
<p>These kinds of (easily preventable) tragedies break my heart! We need more swimming pools, but many school districts and cities consider swimming pools a liabilty and financial burden…</p>
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<p>DD’s friend, a MIT student from the South, could not swim. I do not know how he managed to bypass this test. No one in his family knew how to swim. DD taught him some basics, and he turned out to be a good swimmer - even learned some butterfly. :)</p>
<p>I agree - water safety lessons as public service projects is a great idea, but it could be hard to get these going because of possible liability issues.</p>
For exactly that reason, my D’s black, female principal instituted a rule that no child would graduate from her school without passing a semester of swimming (the school lis over 100 years old and has a pool). She said very frankly that many black children don’t learn to swim and since she had the opportunity and the means to make sure that her predominantly-black student body learned to do so, heaven help anyone who got in her way.</p>
<p>When I was little, our town had a city pool - you had to pay, but not much. The pool was always closed the week the fair was in town…the city didn’t want “them” using the pool. I’ve since wondered if there was ever a legitimate fear of disease dating from way back when, or if it was just prejudice against “carnies” plain and simple.</p>
<p>I just remembered that my daughters both had to pass a swim test at their school when they were in middle school. Their school does have a pool. Most girls already knew how to swim, but there was also an emergency component they had to pass (treading water for a certain amount of time, being able to convert their pants into some kind of flotation device I think, various forms of floating, rescue breathing, etc.).</p>
<p>I live in Louisiana, New Orleans, in fact. You would not believe how many people here do not know how to swim. My nephew and his fiance stayed behind with us during Katrina. It was quite terrifying for her as the waters rose, as she did not know how to swim. BTW, she is white.</p>
<p>It could be a cultural, as well as a regional, thing. We do not have public pools in this area. The local YMCA, which used to host free camp with swimming lessons for low income children, was sold and is now a hotel, like we need more of those. We belonged to the JCC when we were younger, and that is where we learned to swim. But many low income children do not have the resources to even attend camp, and therefore, never do learn to swim. Unlike lakes and rivers in other regions of the country, our Lake Pontchartrain and Missississippi River are not open for recreational swimming.</p>
<p>My daughter is a lifeguard at a local pond. She gets so mad with parents who repeatedly urge their young kids to swim out to the dock, when they’re clearly not strong swimmers. When the lifeguards say anything to the parents, they usually get back, “Oh, he’s a good swimmer in pools. He’ll be fine.” D wants to yell back, “There’s no SIDE to grab on to in this pond! And I can’t see the bottom! If he goes under, it may take me a while to find him!!!”</p>
<p>Actually, they have very few swimmers this week. Last week, a 10 year old boy apparently had a seizure, but it was the type where he just went rigid, not a thrashing seizure. There were 3 lifeguards on duty (D wasn’t there) and only about 15 people in the water. The guards saw the boy playing with friends in waist-deep water, then hanging on one girl and being pulled around. They had no idea anything was wrong until the girl started complaining that the boy wouldn’t let go, and the mom ran screaming into the water, “He’s having a seizure.” The head lifeguard pulled him out, he was turning blue so she started CPR and he responded instantly. The ambulance came, but the mom was screaming at the lifeguards that they weren’t paying attention or doing their jobs, although she never warned them that the kid was prone to seizures, and the lifeguards had never seen anyone have a “frozen” type of seizure. D has since been told that the hospital says the kid had no water in his lungs, but the mom wants an investigation and may sue the town. The guards have been advised not to speak to reporters. D says the people on the beach only saw a blue kid get pulled from the water, they don’t know he was having a seizure, and now apparently word has gotten around that a kid nearly drowned and the lifeguards just stood there. The head lifeguard is really upset.</p>
<p>My kids hardly ever have friends over to our pool and I’m grateful for that. A friend’s D had a birthday pool party - probably her 14th birthday. My friend asked everyone if they could swim. They all said yes. One girl jumped into the deep end and didn’t come up. Turns out she really couldn’t swim. My friend’s older D was watching her and jumped in and pulled her out, but they still had to call an ambulance.</p>
<p>I once left D at a birthday party when she was about 10 with a large oval shaped in-ground pool with a big deep end. There were about a dozen kids at this party, with only 2 adults - the grandmother, who could barely walk, and the mother, who had a sprained ankle. I knew D could swim, but I felt so uncomfortable with the whole thing that we showed up again about 45 minutes later, saying we were on our way somewhere and just wanted to say hi. The mom said, “Oh, you didn’t trust us to watch the kids?” Her husband and teenage daughter were there helping out at that point. D got mad at me for coming back, but I still can’t believe we left her there in the first place.</p>
<p>I suggested to my daughter that a way to make extra money would be to “private duty” lifeguard - notify people around town that she’d lifeguard for pool parties, birthday parties, etc, for a fee. She know a few lifeguards who have done that.</p>
I pretty much trust no one with large groups of kids. Did you all hear about the story here in June (NYC) in which a middle-school class was taken on a trip to a park and the kids then went (with permission) over to the nearby beach which had no lifeguard. You guessed it, a girl drowned and several others were in imminent danger. When my D was younger, a kid from another NYC middle school drowned at Dorney Park for lack of supervision. My kids have never gone on a trip without a parent. My son is going into 7th grade and he knows that if one of us can’t attend, he can’t go. Not negotiable.</p>
<p>Being a mom hosting a birthday party and “watching” the kids is way different than what a life guard does. The hostess has other things to do as well and right, would she jump in after a kid with no hesitation, even if she was carrying a tray of burgers?</p>
<p>I am a confirmed water park hater, but I’m always fascinated at the wave pool when the bell goes off warning that the wave action is about to start and all the life guards stand at attention, eagle-eyed into the very very crowded pool…those lifeguards don’t make nearly enough money for that level of stress!</p>
<p>S2 is a rising college jr. Everyone at his university must pass a swim test to graduate from college. A semester of PE is required of every student regardless of major. When they register for a PE class, they get a notification of when to report the Student Recreation Center for the swim test. They have to swim the length of the pool down and back (without stopping or touching the bottom) and then tread water/float in the deep end for ten minutes. </p>
<p>If they fail to pass the test, they are automatically enrolled in Basic Swimming as their PE class. </p>
<p>On our tour of the univ., the guide told the group that the first Chancellor of the univ. had a young step-daughter who drowned in a nearby pond. He was so grief stricken that he declared no one’s child would ever graduate from the university without knowing how to swim. I believe all the other state u’s in the state have dropped the swim test req.</p>