RandyBrian wrote:
Robert, PLEASE explain to me HOW schools are underfunded !!!!!!!!!!!
I have been hearing this for decades. I live in a town of less than 10,000, and in a county with less than 15,000 people. I am life long friends with many teachers, and I worked for three years as a substitute teacher. Now let me tell you a little about our schools. There are seven empty campuses slowing deteriorating throughout our county. The ISD spends a fortune each year keeping them mowed and structurally sound enough that they won't get sued by kids hurt through breaking and entering. We have a recently upgraded stadium. We have a recently expanded and upgraded middle school. Every active campus has tasteful, designed in art deco to enhance the beauty of the buildings. We have off campus facilities to teach kids biology in the field. We have marching bands, jazz bands, concert orchestras. We have a HUGE theatre for plays and concerts. We have every sport, including some I never heard of. EVERY school has a huge full color computerized display sign, supported and enhanced by brick framework, at a huge expense, that are primarily use to notify us when a student is having a birthday. Every campus has large cafeterias where kids get a wide selection of lunch choices. The higher the grade level, the more choices they have. Every kid has ISD food benefits so that NO ONE has to pay much, if any, for their meals. This includes breakfast and an after school snack. EVERY class room is equipped with computers, computer linked wireless projectors, and internet service. The teachers get good pay, or so they tell me. The good ones work EASILY 55 to 60 hours a week, but they also get two months off during the summer and two weeks off at Christmas, plus a spring break and a fall break. Most of the ones I know see that as being fair.
So please, PLEASE tell me exactly HOW these schools are underfunded?
Robert, PLEASE explain to me HOW schools are under... (
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ISD = independent school district, I hope. I had to look up the acronym.
Aside from hearing and reading and believing that public schools are underfunded, I have one (or probably two) example(s) of a school which was underfunded, and another example of a school board which valued sports over other school-related things. I'll get to those in a minute.
But first I want to agree with a lot of what you are saying (or implying). I deplore the useless expensive upkeep of unneeded campuses, and the decision to spend money on a stadium instead of other school-related things, and the computerized display sign used mainly to announce birthdays. Encountering all that, what _I_ think is: what is guiding that school board's budget decisions?
In this example you give, I would say that that school which you describe _is_ getting enough money, but is not spending it wisely.
Now to my own examples:
The school board which valued sports more than other parts of schooling:
I come from a school that only had a few dozen students, and when enrollment declined below a certain point, the school had to merge with another town's school -- there was some rule or law that said a high school had to have above a certain number of students. That's just to give a little environmental flavor; your county had 15,000 people, mine had 8,000 and declining; and our town had fewer than 300 people, and declining. So, what did our school support, or to put it another way, what did our _school_board_ support? In a word, football. Or in three words, football and basketball. One of the town's most highly educated people ran for school board multiple times but couldn't get elected. That person would have voted on the school board to support a better academic program. But the community didn't value academics as much as it valued football. We also had an excellent gymnasium, and a great girls' basketball team.
(Perhaps incidentally to whatever the school board was doing, the superintendent sidestepped the foreign language teacher's offer to teach me 3rd-year foreign language, by diverting the discussion to ask me what I had against chemistry (I hadn't said anything about chemistry).)
I offer that as an example of a school board which did not sufficiently support a good academic education but instead used its funds to support sports. It happens to be the only school I knew until I went away to college. And it seems to match up pretty well to the situation in the school you describe: perhaps there, too, the school board did not sufficiently support a good academic education but instead used its funds to support less worthy things.
The underfunded public schools that I was close to: one middle school and, probably, one high school:
When my younger child was in middle school (in a big city), she told me about funding problems and I could see her teachers out on the street letting people know they were being underfunded. The school library was being cut (that's the main thing I remember my child talking about -- that plus teachers being underpaid). (She was pretty mad about the library budget being cut.) At least one of my kid's teachers had to quit teaching in the community (part of a city of a million people) because her salary wasn't enough to live on near the school.
My kids' grade school and high school looked good to me. The high school was having at least one problem though: their school counselor budget was too low; these were the kind of school counselors who guide students in the process of getting ready for college. There weren't enough such counselors for the number of students to be served. So the students had to prepare for college without the benefit of such counseling.
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Now, what sort of discussion does one see in the news about schools? It's usually about supporting private schools or charter schools, and deriding public schools. _I_ don't think it represents a push toward better academic education; I think it represents profiteering (privatization of what traditionally was a public function) and a corresponding derision against public funding. The result is that rich people will have more options for schooling while poor people have deteriorating schools and few options if any. It will make more profits for private entities, while there will be less control for the large mass of people who can _vote_ (regarding whatever the public funding -- or the remaining diminished public funding -- would be used for) but aren't _wealthy_ enough to afford private schooling for their kids.
That's the difference between "public" and "private": "public" corresponds to _voting_; "private" corresponds to _wealth_.
And the wealthy people and profiteers have the bigger advertising budgets and the bigger lobbying budgets, as compared with the unwealthy people who can just vote in public elections. _I_ think those advertising and lobbying budgets translate into propaganda. And the wealthy get wealthier and more powerful compared with the others.