A very poor story I wrote in Journalism

This is a product of the journalistic dilemma of people not wanting to talk to you:

Helen Keeling Elementary School historically scores poorly on standardized testing, and because of budget cuts and other issues, the scores continue to drop.
Keeling Elementary is a small kindergarten to 5th grade school made of a student body of 482 located at 2837 N. Los Altos Ave. and part of the Amphitheater Unified School District. There are 37 teachers on staff, making for a student-teacher ratio of 13.1, which is actually smaller than the rest of Arizona’s 21.3 student-teacher ratio. Despite small class sizes, students still seem to be struggling on standardized testing, which is indicative of the vast amount of other problems the school faces.
Keeling Elementary saw drops in their percent passing rating in all categories on Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards, AIMS, in 2008. According to the Arizona Department of Education, the school fell from 68 percent to 64 percent passing in math, from 58 percent to 55 percent passing in reading subject and from 64 to 62 percent in writing. This is far below Arizona’s state passing averages in 2008; 74 percent were passing in math, 69 percent were passing reading and 70 percent were passing writing.
In a state that is according to the U.S. Census 49th in the country for passing standardized tests, these passing ratings at Keeling Elementary are alarming. Budget cuts are much to blame for Keeling and the rest of Arizona schools’ lack of success, and Arizona legislature passed budget cuts this year that will see nearly $133 million taken away from K-12 education. Arizona is already last in the nation for spending on individual students, and this statistic is not deterring legislature, who are hoping the cuts will lessen the $1.6 billion state deficit, away from making more cuts,
“There isn’t enough money in the budget to get the things I need to do my job,” said Keeling Elementary health assistant Helen Sunstedt, “My good thermometer broke and they replace it with some ancient thermometer that takes me 10 seconds to get a read on a child’s temperature, we’re losing the basic necessities.”
Keeling Elementary is located in the Keeling neighborhood association, one of Tucson’s most drug-ridden and violent areas. According to Tucson police, the area has mean drug arrests and violent crimes that are from 4 to 6 times the mean of Tucson’s. Because of this, the school can’t help but see the area’s criminal aspect, especially among the parents. School Administrative Assistant Michelle Howard said, “There is a huge lack of parental involvement among our students, some parents just don’t seem to help kids at all.” This lack of parental guidance could partly account for the school’s poor scoring on standardized testing.
The school has also seen problems with substance abuse among parents, and has had to take action against the parents on separate occasions. Kellie Rogers, the school’s Educational Assistant and clerk, said she sees the crime problem’s effect on the school “constantly”. She said, “The kids seem to know way too much about it (drugs and crime), we’ve had parents who’ve come in intoxicated, and of course we can’t allow them to take their children home on account of the children’s safety. I feel I have a sense of when people are under the influence because I’ve seen it so much while working with the parents here.”
The school also has problems with behavior, but due to the budget cuts, classes that were formerly put into place to separate children with behavioral problems from the attentive students have been cut, creating a disruptive class environment that is not conducive to education. Rogers, who was formerly a teacher in one of these classes, said, “They (the classes) were very draining to work in, we had three teachers for 15 kids all of whom has behavioral issues. Even worse, the parents seemed uninvolved and unwilling to work to create a better education for their child.”
The school also had to lay off its school resource officer. Sam Molina lost his job at Keeling Elementary due to the budget cuts, making the school lack a strong authoritative presence to ensure the students don’t get out of hand.
The language barrier makes it difficult to deal with the parents. The Keeling Elementary student body is made of 71.6 percent Hispanic students, many of who have parents that do not speak English. They only have two Spanish-fluent members of their administrative faculty; the behavior monitor Oscar Bernal and the bilingual translator Sandra Aquino. With so many Spanish-speaking parents it proves difficult for the school to communicate student problems to parents.
To improve education and boost standardized test scores, Howard said they received a 21st Century grant to institute an after school program called “Achieve” that is designed specifically to help kids focus more and do better on standardized tests. Still, Howard doesn’t see the point of measuring a school’s success on standardized testing, “If you’ve passed the state’s school curriculum standards, than that should be your only measure,” she said, “some kids just don’t perform well on standardized testing.”