Posted on Tuesday, 5/19/2009 - 11:40 p.m. PDT — by mtravers
No more $. As a career educator, I'm sick of the waste. I'm sick of the "entitlements." In my district, tons of $ go to both legal and illegal students for their "free/reduced" breakfasts and lunches. MANY arrive in brand new vehicles with wallets full of cash. It is a joke. The standards are......there are no standards. Money is not the issue....it is the smokescreen.
Joined: Sep 2008
Current Posts: 96
...and that's why I voted against Measure D. I have no problems with the $99 going DIRECTLY to the front line; ie, the educators. This is where it's going to do the most good. I have MAJOR problems when these parcel taxes go primarily to support the overhead. Until there's some accountability and clear direction as to where these funds are going with iron-clad guarantees, I'm gonna vote against every one of them. There are too many times where the politicians play accounting tricks with the finances to support their own causes.
Joined: Jul 2005
Current Posts: 1715
Interesting ...
The ultimate solution to perceived woes in California's public school system is for local people to reassert local control. The state definitely has a role to play in that system, but it essentially should be advisory (THIS is what an education in California includes) and one of arbitration (resolving conflicts with broad education and legal codes, etc.). Funding inequities must somehow also be addressed by the state, but basic funding should be a local issue. You guys had a chance to do that in this election, and allowed yourselves to be deceived by the lose-lose arguments presented by both sides of the Measure D debate.
Tell you what ... let's end the practice of consolidating and centralizing our school districts. They told us, beginning in the 1950s and continuing right up to the present day, that schools can be run more "efficiently" with a central administration. Well, from where I sit, they are not particularly "efficient" ... and I even question whether "efficiency" and "learning" should be used in the same context, let alone the same sentence. Break up large, centralized school districts. Decentralize them, even if it means that six independent districts operate within the same city limits, that they hire six different sets of administrators, and duplicate each other's efforts hand and foot. Because they will NOT be duplicating each other's efforts. They will just be doing the same type of work ... the outcome and the purpose of that work, however, will be different. It will be different because each district will answer to a different set of LOCAL parents, parents who don't have to drive across town (or county) to attend a meeting where they do not know anyone and cannot be given a reasonable amount of time to talk to the people they don't know. Individual schools should be accountable to a school site council that is comprised of parents, members of the community and school staff (not just administrators) that has real power to direct and plan and oversee day-to-day operations and long term policy. Members of the Governing Board are a part of the SSC, as well. The Board does not micromanage, but sets policy. Operational decisions are performed by the SSC and/or school staff, and administered by ... well, the principal. A "district" should be high-school based -- one high school, the 2-3 middle schools that feed it, and the 2-3 elementary schools that feed each of the middle schools.
And that's just for starters.