As a parent of five, I send my children to school each day expecting safety, structure and support — but is that still a reasonable expectation? I want to believe it is, but lately, I feel like I’m holding on to hope where there seems to be none.

As a teen, I remember hearing a story, perhaps in some Dale Carnegie book, about a pair of youngsters who thought they could earn some extra spending money. They tallied up all of their chores and little tasks they had done around the house and outdoors, figured out how much time they spent on these, calculated the monetary value of their work, determined the minimum wage, and left a note for their mother before leaving for school with the bill for their labor.

You never know what might be going on behind closed doors.