Since I vented yesterday, I want to remind my readers that I am still a huge fan of the RAS schools, personnel, programs, etc. I just disagree occasionally with miscellaneous things.
My daughters have loved their time in the district schools and are adamant that "we" will not change homes, schools or districts... My wife and I volunteer and donate often in order to do our part to keep the schools strong.
With this in mind, I link to the following reminder posts. How are your school donations in time and/or cash going? We are over half way through, is it time to give some "make up" payments...
G2A Parents Pay for Perks
G2A Precious Stone
Remember, your neighbors are paying as much as you for your child's education and experience. I think us Parents can and should sweeten the pot.... My personal goal is $400/child/year, which is so much less than if they attended a private school. And remember, sports and arts fees are not donations... They are reimbursement for specific extra expenses generated by your child.
Last Thoughts: If you are not a parent and are still appalled at the flat school funding. Please feel free to give your own time and/or money to help the students. Here are some useful links:
RAS Volunteer Page
Seven Dreams Foundation
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20 comments:
If your school budgets are typical, I think you should be kicking in a lot more, if you want to be fair to your neighbors. In most schools, activity fees pay only about 20% of the cost of those NON-required, NON-academic programs that benefit almost exclusively the child. If I wanted to support your child's participation in those endeavors I would contribute beyond my involuntary taxes. If I wanted to enjoy those activities myself I would pay to see them perform in that play, poetry reading, or football game. Everything else ought to come out of your pocket.
J. Ewing
J,
I am not even sure where to start with this one. I think I am reading that you believe public schools should only offer the bare minimum. (ie required academic programs...) Anything beyond this should be payed for exclusively by the parents... Meaning the poor kids would rely on charity or not participate. Did I interpret your comment correctly?
Though I am not personally big on the arts, sports, etc. I can certainly understand that they are as critical to developing well rounded citizens as math, reading, writing and science. Even though some families seem to go overboard with the travelling sports, needing dedicated schools, etc...
Based on our many months of correspondence, I do not see you donating money to help ensure the poor kids can participate in those activities. I mean, how would it benefit you personally? And isn't this what really matters to you? Or at least this is how it sounds...
However I am certain some readers will give to our Seven Dreams foundation or make time to volunteer. Therefore I have advertised the links, in hope some giving individuals will find them useful. At least they should... since they want the funding raised. And what better way for them to do this than open their check book.
Only time will tell.
A side note: I paid taxes long before having kids and will pay long after my kids are out. This is how the system continues to function...
Not sure why this is relevant, however it seems important to this comment string. It shows there is a balance between paying for "your" kid's benefit and supporting "your" society and country... Interesting thought.
I believe that in TOUGH ECONOMIC times as this that some of the higher cost per student sports need to be looked at and extra fees should be charged to the students that play them to be fair to all the others that are subsidizing their sports.
I found the meeting on Wednesday to be interesting that LESS THAN 50 citizen are engaged to ask questions and get information from the District. Hopefully more will come this Wednesday.
I still believe that the best decision for the WHOLE DISTRICT is to make more budget cuts this year to lessen the impact in the future years that will need to be made. It appears that the Board is ONLY looking to make the MINIMUM to balance next year. Not in the best interest of ALL stakeholders.
I believe the argument that public schools are a "public good" that benefits the whole society apply only to the extent that said schools produce citizens capable of contributing to our economic well-being and our responsibility to govern ourselves. All this foofarah surrounding that core mission is unnecessary and expensive and society at large receives little, if any, benefit from it. It's entertainment for the kiddies, and a way to enhance their personal resume' for college, for which parents ought to pay the vast majority, at least.
Now you are going to get a debate about what this "core curriculum" includes. To me, music is essential learning, as is art, as surely as is literature, which we DO cover. I would propose a relatively simple test. If it is something for which you can (or maybe should) get academic credit, say learning and practicing debating tactics (a useful life skill), taxpayers should pay the bulk of it. An expensive trip to compete should be covered by parents or, for poor kids, some organized charity. Things that are NOT for school credit are resume' enhancers for the benefit of students and parents, and the fees should reflect that. You can argue that learning and practicing football provides needed life lessons, and may provide one kid in 10,000 with a short successful career or a college education. Fine, and the taxpayers, myself included, would accept a small share-- say 10% of the cost-- for that general societal benefit. The rest is yours, Mr. Vicarious AllStar.
At the risk of descending into the personal, I continue to pay my taxes (not like I have a choice), which currently fund over 80% of ALL this unnecessary "stuff." Even at that, I never turn away a kid selling raffle tickets for the team to go to wherever, and I don't even take the ticket. I applaud your efforts, it is exactly as it should be. Maybe the idea will catch on, and the school districts, now having to make choices, will begin to see the light.
J. Ewing
Yes, I contribute to my school--both in significant volunteer time and financial contributions. A good bit of my recent contributions have gone to fund things that would--in a wealthier district--have been covered by district budgets. Sad but true.
I came up in a smallish, rural school where we had the "luxury" of being able to be active in band, chorus, 3 sports, drama, yearbook, etc. It kept us very busy, out of trouble, and turned out graduates who, to a surprising degree, went on to successful careers in compeitive fields. Purely conjecture, but I don't think a "nuts and bolts" kind of education (and few of our families could have afforded high participation fees) would have prepared us as well. I feel fortunate for my education and am happy to pay it forward.
I find myself in the rare position of agreeing with J on part of his post--I think the "big" sports are an expensive extracurricular that tends to benefit a comparatively small number of students. I think the European league system would be preferable. Or perhaps a beefed up intramural system so the travel/professional fees can be contained?
Now, back to our regularly scheduled disagreement--it's a prety big cop out to say "the poor kids can rely on charity". Have you any idea how stretched every single nonprofit in this state is in trying to meet the needs of the poor? Relying on some mythical "charity" to underwrite the total actual cost of extracurriculars is disengenuous and pretty short-sighted. The kids from the poorest families often need sports/art/music/etc more than anyone else.
I'm frustrated that of the two meetings - both on Wednesdays, one was less than 2 days notice and the other is on Ash Wednesday. If they want "pubic input" that isn't very good planning.
Frankly, I don't know why these two budget meetings are even being held. These are ineffective communications vehicles unless literally hundreds show up. As for listening, it seemed that every negative point raised was rebutted, some twice.
R--what do you think would have worked better. I wonder about meetings as well, but they're kind of the gold standard for community feedback. I don't think phone/online/survey can really take the place of face to face dialog. I'm guilty of not making it to every meeting, even though I know it's important, but I appreciate that there's at least a forum.
J, Thanks for your thoughts and I am happy you buy raffle tickets.
Leslie, I agree there could have been more notice. We knew it was coming since before the contract was signed. And Ash Wednesday is not ideal.
I can only assume that positive or "miracle" thinking clouded the Board's perceptions. The primary downside of positive thinking. Sometimes the bad things happen no matter how much we believe they won't. (This why I thought the lady who wrote "The Secret" was was a bit "nuts", but I digress.)
Regarding Meetings:
The Facility Divestiture meeting worked fairly well. However the largest difference was that the attendees felt a physical stake in the meeting/process. Their houses are located next to the properties and they were very concerned regarding who their neighbor will be..
Unless a larger portion of RAS citizens truly start to care about their school district and it's path, I don't think it matters too much what method is used. (ie mtgs, surveys, web site, etc)
Some of us typical meeting attendees have a cynical and unfortunate joke to address low meeting attendance. "The best way to get folks to attend meetings is to consider closing a school." Short of this, I am not sure how to get people out to the meetings. Or how to get them to think beyond their own personal agenda. (ie job, special needs, local school, kid's activity, etc)
I guess that is why we keep talking. Hopefully, slowly more people will get involved via this safe, easy and anonymous means. Then they'll get interested enough to come to the meetings.
Well that's my simple dream and why I do this...
Bad News:
I have heard a number of folks that are just giving up, and that is why they are not attending the meetings.
They figure it is decided already. Or they are just burnt out after the past few years of uncertainity and instability in the district.
Now I will always take an energetic opponent over an apathetic one. Once apathy takes over, the engagement in solving the problem usually goes with it.
Thoughts on how to give these folks hope, and how to get them re-engaged in the struggle for excellence on a budget?
How about a whole new way of looking at these meetings? Most of us elect people to school board, the Legislature, etc. so that THEY will take the time, study the issues, and make the necessary decisions that do what must and ought be done. That's why we have a representative republic, so that we don't have to dig into all of this stuff and tell these folks what to do. So when they have meetings like this, it is either to explain to us what they've already decided and to inform us lowly serfs what it is, or it is to get us lowly serfs to make the decisions we've already paid them (not enough, but that's a different debate) to make.
Either way you look at it, the whole problem is that nobody wants to look at the situation with other than magical thinking. We want to do "it" (meaning everything imaginable) "for the children," and we really don't care what it costs or how cost-effectively it gets done, or if it should be done at all. For example, I think you will find that ranking extracurricular activities by "net cost per participant" will show you something in excess of 100:1 spread on costs. The highest of these should have their costs reduced, participation increased, or whacked altogether. It's madness to do otherwise. I'll wager you will find something similar for the curricular programs.
If the budget needs to be cut, it needs to be cut. It can be done sensibly or it can be done stupidly. With those we have elected either unwilling or unable to distinguish between the two approaches, how much confidence can we have in the result of an uninformed citizenry's assistance?
J. Ewing
I spent most of my life happily delegating to these folks. The problem arose when people wanted to give them the responsibility without the funding they requested. Then I became a huge Vote YES supporter. (ie support your elected representatives) Now I keep a little closer eye on things.
It seems hard for them to say no to people. Maybe that's what gets them to run in the first place. Or gets them elected.
I tend to trust my elected officials as well. Not blindly, but they earn the right to represent their constituency and their conscience. Rarely do they really go off the rails (and I'm talking school board, congress, etc).
I'd rather have a board who would like to see things funded and makes cuts reluctantly than one whose default is to cut indiscriminately.
You don't create a successful school (or business or family or marriage) by being gleeful about saying no. I truly hope those candidates never manage to get elected.
The challenge is how far into the year should we let the Tax Free Date move?
Ezine Tax Free Date article
Someone needs to say no more often or we'll be into June soon. Have you looked at your sales tax rate lately.. (goodbye 6.5%, hello 6.9% to 7.3%)
By the way, saying "NO to responsibly live within their budget" and saying "NO arbitrarily/gleefully" are two totally different things in my opinion. I do not know of a business management structure that does not clearly define their vision, priorities, budgets, measureable yearly goals, etc. Then they forcefully mandate performance and conformance with them. Meaning the Board and Administration say NO often and dismiss folks that do not perform or comply.
If they don't say NO and exercise discipline, they end up like GM, Worldcom, Enron, etc...
Just my view. Thanks for your thoughts.
Regarding representative government, I believe in it. We elect people to do this difficult work for us. The best time to critique them is when they run for office, not ding them every two weeks for this and that.
But sometimes, like the phony "Immigration Reform" that Bush & McCain tried to slip under the door, the people do have to stand up between elections.
I would change this, however: make the Superintendent an elected, unlicensed position, like the State Attorney General. The Supt. and Board should work like a Mayor and Council, with total political accountability. They would hire a "School Manager" like a City Manager, Aldo Sicoli in our case. But a "man of the people" is at the helm.
An interesting related thought.
The company I work for has frozen wages, stopped bonuses, seperated or laid off 20,000+ permanent or agency employees, and worked the remainder harder than ever over a 2 year period. This sound typical of late in America.
However the amazing thing is that they handled it so professionally, treated the seperated workers with such respect, and explained why it was required so well that our yearly employee opinion survey showed flat to increased employee engagement scores. (ie Do you like working here? Would you tell your friend to join the company? etc.)
Having met the CEO of our company a couple of times, I can guarantee he took no glee in these actions. He simply acknowledged it was required if the business wanted survive and later grow. Then he help everyone understand.
That's exactly it. Every time we suggest that schools ought to be run like a business, we are told by the high and mighty that their mission is too important, and that public schools cannot be run like a business. And every time public schools are not run like a business, they create huge problems for everybody involved, and then run crying to their "customers" to bail them out. Perhaps the analogy to General Motors is a good one after all. For many years, GM gave huge unsustainable salaries and benefits to the union employees, while failing to produce what their customers wanted, and without increasing the efficiency of their operations to match competition. GM went bankrupt, other car companies did not. The public schools would be going bankrupt right now if competition were free and open. Even the best public schools would have to improve their efficiency to survive cost competition, and I fear a number of them would simply never develop the proper mindset -- the one that lets them say "no" to spending that doesn't make sense.
J. Ewing
My Dad knew a guy that retired from GM at ~50 yrs old. He always referred to "GM" as "Generous Motors". I wonder how he is doing now.
The nice thing about having GM taken over by the federal government and the UAW is that the UAW guys get to keep their perks, something that in a normal bankrupticy would have gone by the boards. GM is now "government moters" and they're going to fail again, until that changes.
J. Ewing
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