<p>This week they announced more cuts within our public school system, which is $1M in the hole and will get no State or City assistance. With no prop override, the following things may happen: </p>
<p>Closing of schools, consolidation of districts
Laying off of teachers
Increase of classroom size (30+)
Elimination of foreign languages K-8
Elimination of Tech Ed, Home Ec, Music, Instruments and art
Elimination of many SPED programs (very expensive)
Students playing sports must pay 100% for each sport
Bus transportation all paid by students, etc.
4th graders will be in the same school as 8th graders. </p>
<p>I'm not bashing public schools. Those teachers and administrators are doing the very best that they can with what they have been given. But with the ever-more competitive world economy, we need more education for our children .. not less. Our community is not poor, but very typical of many cities in America, and we have reached a major crisis this year that has been building for years. </p>
<p>From a parents perspective, this is helping us to justify the major expense
of BS which we are about to shell out (hopefully).</p>
<p>Sorry for the rant. Must be the tension of the big announcement day.</p>
<p>...boarding schools simply do not -- AND CANNOT -- make America more competitive.</p>
<p>As specifically applied to the kids who attend a good-fitting BS or challenging and good-fitting high school...things are okay. Sort of.</p>
<p>Announcements like this are an indicator that America as a nation is becoming less competitive. Yes, it helps to know that your child is learning to swim. But if the dam upstream is failing...there's still reason to be concerned.</p>
<p>This is why, as a private school parent, I refuse to be so narrow-minded as to press for vouchers or tax credits that would draw funds or resources from public schools or vote against tax programs that would improve our public schools. Regardless of where my child is in school -- and regardless of whether I've got kids in school for that matter -- America's public school infrastructure needs to be a higher priority and better funded.</p>
<p>We're pretty good as a nation at building great institutions without thinking of them as having to be funded through user fees. Yet so many of us look askance at our public schools and only see value in them while they have children attending them. I hope we can get past that mindset because this nation is already starting to suffer from it.</p>
<p>(As long as the soapbox was there, I thought I'd stand on it, too!)</p>
<p>This is terrible the way some schools are going down into the pit. Same with private schools.</p>
<p>In the past couple years, our teachers have gotten less and less qualified to be teachers, we lost the music program, and almost EVERYTHING on top of the basic classes costs extra money! What is this all going to come down to?</p>
<p>same for my school too. "budget chopping"
(cue eye rolling here).
not that we had an awe-inspiring list of music/art programs, but we've been getting less adequate teachers every year. its frustrating, since i like both music and art. :(</p>
<p>i had the privelege of attending an amazing elementry school. we had Spanish, a band, art, and a rather advanced curriculum. That was in NJ. When I moved to California, I was faced with the perils of public education. I was learning stuff I learned 3 years before in 4th grade. I started to not care about school. I got my first C, D, and F ever.. I stopped going to school altogether, was repeatedly kicked out of class when i did show up, and played many succesful pranks when I was allowed to stay. I was so frustrated with the school.. I felt so held back, I just stop caring at all. It was such an inimical environment. And this was in one ofthe top 50 richest zipcodes in America... they had plentayyy of funding. And we didn't even have sports teams! And everyone in the area though they were so great, that there was no need for private schools, it seemed. When we moved to another top 50 zip code, the same thing happened! This is when I started to become really frustrated with the government.. and started looking at boarding schools.</p>
<p>The problem is that there is no real incentive, no ** motive ** to incite scrutiny within the school system and to promote improvement. The teacher's unions are too powerful, and they care more about themselves than about the well being of children. It is exceedingly difficult to dismiss sub-par teachers without a years-long process with tons of paperwork. The money going to schools is not improving education materials, or classroom facilities, or teaching resources, it is going to things that are not imperative: remodeled auditoriums, new athletic facilities, computer labs, etc. As great as these things are for kids, they do not explicitly create a more productive learning environment. We need to pay our teachers more, of course, but as a tradeoff, we have to make teachers hold to a higher standard. Entrance exams should be established that make sure only the most capable teachers are in the classrooms. We need to promote teaching as a profession and improve the benefits of that career so that there is something real to promote. Each state should establish a proprietary fund that only goes to improving academic facilities at schools, and nothing else. Curricula need to be changed so more students find the content of their lessons meaningful to them, and applicable to the real world. </p>
<p>It is not a question of funding, but WHERE the funding should go, because right now, it is not going to the right place, and millions of taxpayer education dollars are being wasted on non-essentials.</p>
<p>The very best public schools are the ones with very strong parental involvement. The teachers can't do it all. We live in a very good public school district. Average SAT at the high school is over 1200 and this is for a school with 2500 students. Last year we had 30 National Merit Finalists. Lots of parental involvement beginning with the elementary schools. We have also experienced significant budget cuts due to the state legislature not making the hard choices but the schools haven't suffered because the parents have stepped up. My brother and sister both attend the public school and they have received an amazing education with lots of extracurricular activities.</p>