<p>North</a> Carolina no longer gives a damn | Trouble Hunter | Creative Loafing Charlotte</p>
<p>Be sure to read the last 4 paragraphs, where we discover where motivation for this devastating legislation comes from. I don't think this link violates the blog rule, but if it does, apologies. It was sent to me via professional channels and it's hard to check the primary source.</p>
<p>Utter nonsense.</p>
<p>Cash Strapped? The spending per pupil is more than enough, exceeding on average every Catholic school in the state.</p>
<p>There was an INCREASE in spending year over year from 2012-2013 to 2013-2014. And the problem schools in the rural and poverty stricken areas CANT GET ANY WORSE, so I’m not sure what the cry for ‘accountability’ is. These are districts that can’t pass basic math but have Ipad and “Farm to Table” programs. They also have enviable IT structures that go largely unused- I know a company who installed a 10 million dollar network in Waddell here in Charlotte 2 years before it was shut down. The amount of abject waste in NC public schools is obscene.</p>
<p>If these schools really need cash, cut non teaching administrators and these ridiculous programs</p>
<p>The cuts of ‘teaching assistants’ and others should not meaningfully affect the quality of education, and I welcome a new change of direction. Continuing to fund the current system is an exercise in insanity.</p>
<p>Not sure why private K-12 education is necessarily incompatible w accountabilty. The state could easily mandate terms the private schools have to abide by to be eligible for the vouchers. It’s not like public schools have all demonstrated accountability. </p>
<p>The gov’t outsources lots of services that it funds, including vouchers for private colleges (i.e. Pell Grants).</p>
<p>And it looks like they have plenty of money anyway:</p>
<p>Time Warner Cable Arena will be hosting a Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools employee Pep Rally on Thursday, August 22nd. The doors will open at 8:30 AM with the event beginning at 10:00 AM and ending by 12:30 PM. Up to 17,000 employees have been invited to attend this event.</p>
<p>CMS will be utilizing 70 blue and white Activity Buses as a shuttle service with drop-off on Fifth Street. No more than three buses at a time will be dropping curbside. Buses will stage away from the arena or along Fifth Street and come curbside when summoned by CMS transportation staff. Employees have also been encouraged to carpool, use public transportation, or park in the old Education Building on MLK, at the First Ward School, or at Walton Plaza. Employees are also told they can utilize paid parking in the arena area.</p>
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<p>Because private schools don’t have to take ALL students. They can hand pick whoever they want and leave the “undesirables” in public schools. Special needs students would never be served in private schools nor would students with discipline problems.</p>
<p>@Lime,
Did u not read the 2nd sentence of my comment that u posted?</p>
<p>^sorry, thought you were referring to “accountability” which I interpreted as testing. If you meant that they would have to follow the exact same guidelines as the publics, then… my bad.</p>
<p>About government outsourcing lots of services… how about fire and police? This seems like another area where they could save a ton of money.</p>
<p>As a NC resident with 5 kiddos who graduated and did well within the public schools here in Wake I have no problem with the legislative belt tightening. Go ahead. We moved here from CA since it was affordable and they offer more than affordable and great eduaction at the undergrad and grad school level. No more than 18% can be from OOS so 82% are in-state.</p>
<p>UNC’s in-state tuition is a FANTASTIC deal and the other 15 campuses offer unique and fantastic opportunites. The public districts funnel all these kids to the public undergrads and keep it affordable for all unlike other state’s in-state tuition rates like CA and PA. Walking away with an engineering degree ABET accredited for under $12K per year including room and board is almost unheard of but not here in NC.</p>
<p>Son’s med school tuition is $16,000 for the year. The scholarships offered by the state legislature slammed in the above blog, also provide free tuition for all 4 med schools in NC. Again most states do not offer this. Their goal is to keep docs educated here, to stay here to practice esp in primary care. Seems to be working , UNC and CMC are top residencies…</p>
<p>The state legislature funds/admins all levels of education, not just K-12, again very different from VA, Michigan, CA, PA…</p>
<p>Kat</p>
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It astonishes me how many people assume teachers can teach in a vacuum. Just stick a good teacher in front of a room and - magic! Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. </p>
<p>Teachers need a curriculum. They need someone ordering appropriate supplies. They need staffers providing support services for students. They need people doing all the paperwork that the federal gov’t requires. They need someone making intelligent decisions about what technology to order, training them to use it meaningfully in the room, and fixing it when it doesn’t work. They need people providing discipline for unruly students and dealing with parents who step over the line. They need someone doing payroll and paying the bills. Teachers who don’t get this support spend all their time working on things OTHER than teaching, and learning suffers.</p>
<p>If you saw a company with 1600 clients, 120 employees and only one supervisor, would you think that was wise? Of course not. Yet I’ve heard people complain that a high school with 1600 kids and 120 teachers/aids/guidance counselors was top heavy - because there was a principal and 3 vice principals. “What are all those VPs doing?” How about supervising and mentoring the 120 classroom professionals? Teachers need feedback just like any other employee, but they can’t get meaningful feedback and advice unless there’s someone experienced and knowledgable, with the time to sit in on their classes repeatedly to see what truly goes on. How about working with troubled kids and answering parent questions? I honestly think anyone who followed one of those VPs around on any given day would have been exhausted and surprised by how non-stop their day was, and the variety of dilemmas they were expected to solve.</p>
<p>I’ve worked in public and private schools. I’ve seen what a difference it makes to teaching and learning when teachers are adequately supported by administrators, and when they aren’t. As the saying goes, “Feed the teachers, so they don’t eat the kids.” In other words, teachers who feel supported are better able to teach and support students.</p>
<p>The cuts to teaching assistants won’t affect education? The teacher’s assistants I know in North Carolina do (or did) the following (and they were paid very poorly):
*prepared, monitored, delivered and administered medications for students
*provided small group or individualized reading support services for students who were behind grade level
*provided support to students who were struggling, but not qualified for ED/BD/LD services
*provided assistance for students who had health or behavior issues that required semi-individualized attention, but did not qualify for an individualized assistant
*did tons of administrative work and provided cover for areas like the libraries, which had already seen staff cuts, during the school day so teachers could focus on the students</p>
<p>Even if the assistants are replaced by one or two staff members (and I have no idea if that’s the plan), losing the people who do all these things to help the schools function is hard to absorb.</p>
<p>ETA: I’m sure that schools in districts like Chapel Hill-Carrboro have specialized staff for things like medication, but my friends work/ed in districts that were not as well supported.</p>
<p>I have a hard time believing that the super skilled labor of teaching assistants (part time, 8-9 dollars an hour) is that hard to replicate. It seems like </p>
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<p>You failed to address any of the specific programs I mentioned including the PEP RALLY FOR EMPLOYEES next week, and failed to realize the number of guidance counselors, coaches, and other non-teaching staff actually in the schools. In addition, these systems have entire complexes full of ‘administrators’ of all sorts of things of negligible value add that don’t even set foot inside of schools.</p>
<p>17,000 employees(and those are just the ones invited to the ‘pep rally’ uptown means 8.3 ‘clients’ per employees. Thats ludicrous for a public, ‘cash strapped’ school system.</p>
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<p>This is an opinion. I think they could cut 60% of the people in the MULTIPLE state dept of education and local school district office buildings (CMS being particularly heinous with 3+) and no one would ever notice.</p>
<p>These School funding debates are typically based on emotion and never bear any resemblance to the facts- i think this ones pretty obvious. Anytime you look at the actual numbers, there’s just no argument.</p>
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Yes indeed, what you stated here is an OPINION, and in my view an uneducated one. I have to ask - have you ever worked in education? I have. I’ve worked in both public and private schools. I would never presume to know how many people it takes to run a company or service in a field I hadn’t worked in.</p>
<p>Here’s something I’ve learned: Just because I don’t know what someone does, it doesn’t mean their job is unimportant. It just means I don’t know every detail of how a large organization works. (“…all sorts of things of negligible value.” Well if you don’t know what they do or you don’t make use of that particular service, of course it’s negligible - to you.) </p>
<p>Public school systems run MUCH leaner than private schools. The average private independent day school has only 50% of its employees working in classrooms (statistic from NAIS, the National Ass’n of Independent Schools). Private schools understand that to run an excellent school, teachers and students need a lot of support. And private schools are dealing with a much more selective population - kids whose parents care about education and are willing to spend significant money (on top of what they already pay in taxes) to see that their child receives a good education. </p>
<p>Public schools, on the other hand, are required to serve kids who are going to college and kids who are going to jail and everyone in between. </p>
<p>You’re complaining about one employee per 8 kids? The private school where I work has one employee per 5 kids, working with a very uniform population of motivated students - no poverty, no special ed. (That 5:1 ratio includes administration and clerical staff. Our faculty/student ratio is 7:1. About 67% of our staff are classroom teachers - we’re leaner than the average private school. And in case you think we’re coddling the kids with all sorts of extra services, our kids clean the lunchroom themselves.) The public district where I used to work had about 1 employee per 6 kids - again, including all the central office staff - and they were one of the lowest cost/student districts in the state of MA. </p>
<p>I don’t think a “pep rally” once a year is a horrible thing. Do private companies never have company picnics or holiday parties? Do they never show their employees some appreciation or try to get them excited about an upcoming project or a new year? </p>
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I’ve looked at the numbers. And yes, there is a VERY valid argument.</p>
<p>Please don’t believe everything you read - especially when it comes from ‘Creative Loafing’. </p>
<p>I agree with Rexximus - the waste in the Charlotte public schools is absolutely unbelieveable. Some of our schools have a per pupil expenditure of over $15,000/year and the kids STILL CAN’T READ. Some people still insist we need to throw more money into public schools.</p>
<p>Sadly, even with the ‘doom and despair’ we read about everyday - people are still moving here in droves.</p>
<p>The Matt Damon thread that is still going on covers a lot of this.</p>
<p>But I agree that NC no longer gives a damn. The governor’s favorability rating has plummeted since he initiated all these draconian policies–the schools, abortion, voting rights. He simply does not care that what he is doing is COMPLETELY against the will and the wishes of most NC residents. He is the puppet of the corporate overlords like the Kochs, the DeVos family and others who are pushing their agenda state by state. He only cares about pleasing them.</p>
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<p>That’s great you think its reasonable that an organization is so arcane and bureaucratic that you can literally not understand what someone does and their job is still magically important.</p>
<p>In the land of government bureaucracies, I’m sure this is common place. In the real world, its completely unacceptable. CMS has 9,221 teachers and 6,429 support staff. I’d love to see a breakout of those numbers of support staff(I bet it doesnt even include janitors/groundskeepers and other contrated labor), but on the whole each support staff supports 1.4 teachers. This is not a reasonable ratio.</p>
<p>Back when the U.S. had nothing but privatized schooling, our students were number one across the board. It’s a great idea.</p>
<p>Yes, not having any public education 150+ years ago worked great. Of course there weren’t any poor children being educated. They had to go to work to help keep their families from starving. There weren’t many girls. For a very wealthy few, there were tutors and/or “finishing schools” that taught them how to read, write nice letters, paint pictures, sew, and maybe play an acceptable instrument. There were a few private schools for the tiny number of black children whose parents could afford to send them, and those schools were often very long distances from their homes and/or in other states. </p>
<p>Oh, and let’s not forget the disabled – blind and/or deaf children, children who couldn’t walk, children with mental disabilities, children with autism, children with seizure disorders. Those children still won’t get the time of day from many private schools because they are often difficult and/or expensive to teach. Back then, most lived at home or were warehoused in “insane asylums”.</p>
<p>If our few privately educated, mostly white, non-disabled males were number one in the world, well then, wasn’t that just peachy keen?</p>
<p>"You failed to address any of the specific programs I mentioned including the PEP RALLY FOR EMPLOYEES next week, and failed to realize the number of guidance counselors, coaches, and other non-teaching staff actually in the schools. In addition, these systems have entire complexes full of ‘administrators’ of all sorts of things of negligible value add that don’t even set foot inside of schools.</p>
<h1>17,000 employees(and those are just the ones invited to the ‘pep rally’ uptown means 8.3 ‘clients’ per employees. Thats ludicrous for a public, ‘cash strapped’ school system."</h1>
<p>I hope you’re not a manager. </p>
<p>This “pep rally” is not an uncommon event that occurs ONCE a YEAR to start the new academic year on a positive note. There is nothing even remotely like this at any other time. When I worked at Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the top school districts in the country, every August the system held a 2-3 day mini-conference for all teachers and support staff. I usually just went for one day because I was a planner (one of those ‘useless’ administrators) and the majority of sessions were directed toward teachers and counselors. The great thing about this was you got to meet people in other schools, buildings, fields within the school system and exchange ideas as well as put faces to emails and phone calls. BTW, this was a far less expensive solution than sending teachers out to national or even regional conventions.</p>
<p>One can complain about student support (I see you do) who needs guidance counselors, teacher aides/assistants, reading specialists, psychologists, math specialists? I would argue ALL students. </p>
<p>In my daughter’s high school, there are 2400 students (600 a grade). Her STEM program (100 students/grade) has its own guidance counselor while the rest of the school split up 4 counselors. Great - that means D’s counselor has 400 students while the rest of the counselors have 500 students each. How well do you think these counselors know the children? But if they doubled the number of counselors (lessening the load to a mere 200-250 a counselor), people like you would scream about costs.</p>
<p>Can there be cuts made to any organization? Most likely but I don’t think slashing entire divisions and offices is the answer. When a school systems cuts the testing office staff (because, well, it was too expensive and who needs those administrators?), that means the cut-off date for kindergarten entrance held firm. Why??! (I can hear the screams already from G/T parents). Well, who does everyone did the evaluation of these children? The testing office.</p>
<p>Things you just blamed on schools being private:</p>
<p>-societies treatment of the mentally ill a century ago
-poor children not being educated(have you seen poor schools today?)
-segregation in schools and lack of schools for minorities
-lack of schooling for handicapped children and/or the fact that cost to teach handicapped children is higher(it still cost more to teach a special child today)</p>
<p>Way to stay objective and directly challenge whether or not private schools might produce better students.</p>
<p>Where I live, they don’t.</p>