SWAC Tax Referendum
The people who live in SWAC District are voting today on a referendum to increase property taxes. What I saw a bit disconcerting is the use of the Homestead High School Sign out front saying vote “YES.” I thought that the school system was to stay neutral and provide no support either with school or money. Unless both sides have equal access to the school system resources this is an unfair advantage for the SWAC.
I do not live in the school district, but I have several family members who do. With the economy the way it is we all know that layoffs, reduction in work hours, elimination of any raises and in many cases a reduction in pay and benefits are a part of life. Many companies have temporarily stopped contributing to pensions and 401(k)’s. I know of several in our area who have gone to a 4 day work week, no over time and reduced hours. All these cuts were done to save peoples jobs.
I would like to know what school systems are doing to reduce costs. Are they eliminating pay raises? Are they temporarily eliminating contributing to pensions? Have the reduced sick days and/ or vacation days? These are tough times and when a school system asks those paying the bills to pay more, I want to know what they are doing to reduce costs and shoulder the bad economy like the rest of us?
posted by William Larsen @ 12:43 PM
3 Comments:
Bill:
AS a husband of a FWCS teacher, and am privy to most of what transpires in that system, I';d LOVE to see cuts across the board...
Starting from the TOP...on DOWN!
You don't screw over the educators aka the grunts in the trenches...they're the ones fighting the battles for childrens' minds...
Start with the admins aka the GENERALS.
But that's just *my* take on it.
B.G.
Bob, I agree 100% with you. How much of each dollar actually goes to teaching? We have superintendent's who are building empires. They like to use words like "reinventing", but do we need reinventing or do we need optimization?
The human brain process information the same way it has for the past 10,000 years. We are still on rev 0. Mathematics which I will include addition, subtraction, division and multiplication is the same, nothing has changed. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus is still the same, again nothing has changed. When I was in school I was taught history, geography and social studies. We started with the dark ages and bit before and went up through the Korean War. This covered nearly 2,000 years. Now we have a bit of modern history that added fifty more years. Administrators keep fooling around with instruction when maybe they should leave it alone and get back to basics. The purpose of K-12 is to teach our children how to teach themselves, yet they have taken on the task to teach every subject possible, reducing their basic education.
I would really like to know how many students actually get a job by knowing something that was specifically taught in a school besides the standard courses?
Bill:
As a contemporary of yours (from the East coast now living here), I can't agree more.
Little has changed since WE were getting our "3Rs"...
And the "bosses" keep trying to REINVENT the damn wheel, when they SHOULD be saving ALL that wasted money for NEWER books, school repair (oh, wow, they can do that with THAT money?), and lower administrative expenditures.
You get kids learning by getting them and KEEPING them in their classrooms daily, and then promoting DISCIPLINE, ACHIEVEMENT, GROWTH, ETHICS, WORK HABITS, INTEGRITY, RESPONSIBILITY, and ACCOUNTABILITY.
The subject matter pretty much takes care of itself after that.
Now, I might be missing the turnip truck on this one, but which subject EXACTLY, in all this "new age teaching" is actually indicative OF those aspects of learning I mentioned above, hmm?
I just "call em as I see 'em".
(helluva fault, isn't it?)
Excellent commentary!
Post a Comment
<< Home