School Budget Issues - Some Go to 4 Day Weeks

[Guest]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080818/ap_on_re_us/schools_hard_times

 

IDK about anyone else, but when I was in high school (at Glenbrook North in Illinois) a bus pass cost well over $400 and a parking pass was around $275. Lunch was between $4-$5 and books were at least $300 for a semester. Thats completely rediculous IMO for a public school. I walked to school, didnt eat there, and got the books from the library or mooched them off friends so fortunately never had any problems but still found it hard to believe. I did have to pay the freakin towel fee though.

 

This article overblows a lot of things ($2 for a lunch, please) but still brings up some good points. Thoughts?

[printersdevil78]

OK, this is the kind of thing that really ticks me off. I spent a fair number of years as an education reporter, and I shudder to think how much money has been wasted, at least in the school district in grew up in, on pointless fads and trends that served to do nothing but dumb down/confuse the basic educational process ("Hey, someone out in California figured out a new-age way to teach math... without numbers! We could use some of that forward thinking here... and it'll only cost us $8,000 per student!").

 

And don't even get me started on No Child Left Behind. It's like someone somewhere one day decided, "Let's find the most uneducated child in each school and spend millions of dollars in every district dumbing things down to his/her level--and if we set the testing standards high enough and vow to cancel all funding to schools who don't meet these standards after we've forced them to dumb everything down, eventually the federal government will be off the hook for ever having to spend another dime on education ever again!"

 

In this article specifically, I completely understand the rising fuel and food costs. Profit margins for school bus contractors have been declining for years; a four-day school week makes more operational sense from a fiscal standpoint (though it may prove to be a new burden on parents), and I'm amazed that there are still places in America where school lunch still costs $1.45 (it was $1.10 when I graduated in 1996). But as far as field trips go, the last tax-funded field trip I ever took was in the sixth grade (1990), after which they were universally dropped from the curriculum due to budget cuts (or maybe the local school board was just prescient enough to foretell that this would be an even bigger problem 18 years down the road). That's not to say we never traveled through the school--we just either had to pay our own way or work at a school-sanctioned fundraiser to pay for it.

 

And then there's this gem:

 

"Parents have been cutting back all summer. For back-to-school clothes, Heidi McLean shopped at outlets and the Marshalls discount chain for her son and daughter, high school students in Eureka, Calif."

 

^Well isn't that special? When I was growing up, I would have KILLED for a Marshalls. Or even a Wal-Mart. Most of our clothes came mail-order from the Sears and JCPenney catalogs. The closest mall was more than an hour away (right next to the closest "fancy" grocery store--the kind that carried both Little Debbie AND Hostess products), and there wasn't any such thing as the Internet.

 

However, this part's my favorite:

 

"But this year, I'm forcing the kids to reuse their backpacks," McLean said. "They each cost $50. They like the special cool ones, and they're still holding up."

 

^And she can use the money she saved to buy more crack, which is what anyone (at least anyone I know) would have to be smoking to buy their kids a new $50 backpack each year "just because." I used the same backpack all through high school... and college... and 16 years after my parents bought it for me--for $20--I still use it as carry-on luggage during short trips. If one of the straps broke, my mom sewed it. If it got dirty, my mom washed it (Dad didn't do much in the way of backpack maintenance, apparently). Of course, I guess it probably wasn't "special cool"... but I was valedictorian of my high school class and went on to graduate from college summa cum laude, so I guess it did the job.

 

Maybe I'm just old and crotchety, but I grew up in an extremely impoverished area. I was one of the luckier ones, but you'd better believe I saw what a lot of my classmates went through--and what a lot of people there today still go through--just to survive day-to-day, much less get a proper education.

 

When school's not in session, meaning the federal free and reduced lunch program is on hiatus, a lot of these kids are fortunate to get a single meal per day. Taking that into consideration, it really burns me up to read that people's ideas of "cutting back" are shopping at Marshalls (the horror!) and forcing their kids to use the same backpack for more than nine months at a time.

[Calaway Park]

Schools generally have perfectly large amounts of money, but they spend it frivolously and use it as an excuse if they're not providing proper education. Ask half of your teachers why the education system stinks right now, they'll tell you "money!"

 

First day of high school on the 2nd!

 

-Sean

[mr_teisco_delrey]

Schools generally have perfectly large amounts of money, but they spend it frivolously and use it as an excuse if they're not providing proper education. Ask half of your teachers why the education system stinks right now, they'll tell you "money!"

 

First day of high school on the 2nd!

 

-Sean

9 / 10s of them will say administrators. Administrators get in the way big time.

 

^^ printersdevil78 - I don't dare bring up NCLB (No child left behind) with my wife. She is a teacher. NCLB is the bane of her's and every other teacher in the USA. The time wasted documenting crap is unreal. Roll that in with the unbelievable amount of money pissed away and it is no wonder things are as hosed as they are.

[ginzo]

and there wasn't any such thing as the Internet

 

Actually, there was. It was just in a very primitive form and only used by academics.

[ParkTrips]

I actually really like this idea for jr and sr high schools - elementary children are probably too young to stay home by themselves should the parents not be able to find or afford an alternative, but these are the things that we need to be doing to cut consumption. I'd love if my state mandated that secondary public schools be put on a 4-day schedule, it would save the taxpayers money and help cut demand for gas.

[kalvin]

If they cut school down to 4 days a week wouldnt that mean we have to go to school for longer into the summer?

[bgeguy]

^Or they could extend the school day another hour or so.

[coasterdude5]

I wouldn't mind a four-day week. I know a few adults who have four-day work weeks.

[printersdevil78]

and there wasn't any such thing as the Internet

 

Actually, there was. It was just in a very primitive form and only used by academics.

 

Well, yes, I know the Internet has existed in some way since the late '60s... but my point was, we couldn't order clothing from our computers. We actually had to put a stamp on an envelope and mail the orders to the catalog stores. And believe it or not, we also had a rotary telephone in our home.

 

By cracky!