Growing Numbers

[TRN]

Students in California will wake up to a nice surprise at the end of this coming summer -- more changes for California schools. The state budget crisis has filtered down to the schools.

30,000 teachers and administrators throughout the state of CA received March 15th notices. They will need to consider other employment. And this is on the backs of an expected increase of 100,000 student enrollment.

The worst districts placed all teachers and administrators on notice and then claimed they didn't want to cause a panic or alarm. Yeah - right.

While driving home the other day, I heard one principal from Ohio explain that it broke her heart to fire all of the first, second, and third year teachers. Sure sure.

This is simply a political move to cause a problem, create hysterics, and then ask - no demand - for more money. Each day I've witnessed our schools and students being held hostage by increasing demands and decreasing productivity.

Personally, it's all about money; who has it and who wants it. Therefore, the safest avenue for our children is to close the schools, fire the admins and teachers and start from the beginning. Yeah - I'm not completely serious but we need to focus on our children and get real about costs and expenditures.

[redoscar]

The sad reality is that 95% of local, state, and federal public servants are career politicians. They sell their soul to the devil to get supported by their party. These people are not looking after the public's interest. They are simply looking to enhance their own well being.

Rather than fix the real problems in our system, these sellouts use the children, the poor, the sick, and the less fortunate in our society to justify more money for their coffers.

School systems around the country are now being used as political pawns. There is no shortage of money available to the government to do the things needed. But after the career politicians extract their toll for service and feed the pork barrels, little remains to meet the true needs of our society.

It is truly a sad state of affairs.

Now stepping down from my soapbox.

Red

[Davepet]

LPH,
Knowing that you are a teacher, I expected that this was going to be a "flame" about budget cuts & how much harm they were going to cause.

You are the first person I have ever heard, in the education field, that has ever said there enough money available to get the job done.

Your comment: "Personally, it's all about money; who has it and who wants it. Therefore, the safest avenue for our children is to close the schools, fire the admins and teachers and start from the beginning.Yeah - I'm not completely serious but we need to focus on our children and get real about costs and expenditures."
Closely parallels my own feelings: There is plenty of money available, but too many layers of administration burning it up before it gets where it needs to go.

The taxpayers of California have, until recently, been sending that message to California schools for years now....maybe your idea isn't so bad after all ;o)

Dave

[robbie_n]

Bureaucracy is one of the curses of the Western/US system of government, unfortunately. Once the bean counters get in, there's no stopping them.

[TRN]

I was thinking that there could be a possible solution to the school problems without causing a nightmare... only my thought isn't detailed. Here is the general idea.

Problem: Money is being poured into the schools. Over $6000 per student. This money is not making it into the classroom.

Solution: Set a percentage of money that is required to go directly into the classroom. In order for the school to receive said money, their budget must reflect the percentages.

For example,

Jimmy Jack: State collects $6000 and gives this money to district.

X % == District pays themselves, administrators, teachers, and staff; rent; maintenance; etc.

Y % == Money for materials in classroom (books, papers, etc)

Z % == field trips

Of course, people will argue about adding other categories or determining what goes in each category but if we have set percentages then we can work within the framework of these numbers.

If Y % is 10% then we are stating $600 per student. Jimmy has 6 classes. Therefore $100 per class is given for materials. My classes are an average of 34 students (some with 20 and some with 44, averaging to a small number of 34). This would give $3,400 for each class period or over $20,000 for my 6 classes.

Problem solved.

[Davepet]

LPH, I think I like that idea... but like you said, I have a category to add. I would like to see a percentage required to be spent on the infrastucture.

Building, maintenence, etc. The current attitude of financing these things by floating bonds is just not sound fiscal policy.

[pet peeve]
Since prop 13, just about every county has adopted "school fees" added to most new construction permits....why isn't that money earmarked to build new schools?
[/pet peeve]

Dave

[TRN]

LPH, I think I like that idea... but like you said, I have a category to add. I would like to see a percentage required to be spent on the infrastucture.

Building, maintenence, etc. The current attitude of financing these things by floating bonds is just not sound fiscal policy.

[pet peeve]
Since prop 13, just about every county has adopted "school fees" added to most new construction permits....why isn't that money earmarked to build new schools?
[/pet peeve]

Dave

Down in the southland, we have our big boo boo.... in which several hundred million dollars were spent on a building that straddled a fault line. Oops. So, they are back to looking for a place to build another high school. Silly. It's not like there weren't geologists available a few years back when that land was proposed as a building site.

Now we get to pay for that mistake.

We also get to pay for the fact the school board wanted private bathrooms. So, 117 million dollars was spent on fixing up another building so that they could have private bathrooms. Meanwhile, my students struggle to get paper towels and soap.

:roll:

So, I agree that a percentage needs to go to infrastructure.