I don’t know where all of it goes. I wonder if this quote on May 12 from Mike Piscal of Inner City Education Foundation is relevant to raising the question in another way?
How or why are our public schools in South Los Angeles so utterly broken? Why won’t anybody stand up and be accountable for the total failure of these schools? Some are quick to blame the lack of money, but these 62,000 school children are getting nearly $9,000 in public funds per student for a total of half a billion a year. Half a billion a year and the end result is 258 college graduates a year!!!
Hmm. At $9,000 per student, a South Los Angeles high school biology teacher I know with 42 students each of 6 periods a day (and only 39 student desks and fewer textbooks) generates one-third of a million dollars for his $30,000 academic year salary.
Subtracting his salary from reimbursement the school receives from California for his students, over $300,000 remain. Why won’t the district use some of that money to buy him one Tablet PC?
I know he uses a Tablet PC regularly, at his own expense, including personally paying to replace ones stolen from his classroom. Student responses increased when he introduced the Tablet PC based instruction. It gave a point of visual focus they accepted. (The district office refused to accept his claim against the school’s insurance to replace his stolen Tablet PC, because it was a personal, unauthorized item that was stolen.)
Is this the same kind of situation in other school districts? I wonder how many Tablet PCs students use in South Los Angeles?