Have you ever wondered how much public schools cost

[Swany00]

clearly we're not getting our money's worth and many of us don't even have rugrats in the system anymore

[LATB]

Originally Posted by Swany00

clearly we're not getting our money's worth and many of us don't even have rugrats in the system anymore

Vouchers would fix that and fix a lot of problems.

And...I believe that if you are paying school taxes without school aged kids, you should still be able to direct your portion to the school of your choice.

[Rodnok1]

I don't agree with vouchers, they started it here few years back and of course you had to be a certain "social economic" population to get them.
They've changed it some and believe it's open to more, however if you're making 250k a year you shouldn't be eligible at all.
If they want to do something better they should privatize schools. Hold them to a standard aka get paid more if they do better for example. They build the schools and provide transportation.

[LATB]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

I don't agree with vouchers, they started it here few years back and of course you had to be a certain "social economic" population to get them.
They've changed it some and believe it's open to more, however if you're making 250k a year you shouldn't be eligible at all.
If they want to do something better they should privatize schools. Hold them to a standard aka get paid more if they do better for example. They build the schools and provide transportation.

Strongly disagree.

Income has nothing to do with it. Hell, some of the highest earners own expensive property and that's where the school taxes are collected.

Turn the education system back to the states as it used to be. And the states can regulate private businesses who will have a much higher incentive to build and staff good schools...it's called profit.

[sublime1996525]

$7,500 to $8,500 in Utah. We typically spend towards the bottom for student spending.

[Onebadcad]

There is trend, a trend of thievery, which is evident in all gov entities, a consistency that cannot be denied.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pres...-spending.html

The states that spent the most per pupil in FY 2021 were New York ($26,571); the District of Columbia ($24,535), which comprises a single urban district; Vermont ($23,586); Connecticut ($22,769); and New Jersey ($22,160). Those spending the least per pupil were Idaho ($9,053), Utah ($9,095), Arizona ($9,611), Mississippi ($10,170) and Florida ($10,401).


Seven of the nine states in the Northeast region (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont) were ranked among the top 10 in spending per pupil in FY 2021. Pennsylvania ranked 12th and Maine was ranked 13th.


Of the 20 states with the lowest per pupil spending, 17 (Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah) were in the South or West regions. The remaining three were Missouri, South Dakota and Indiana.

[04 commemorative]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

Teachers in NC once they have tenure are almost impossible to get rid of.
I got a principal to admit he was stuck with a transfer and she was the worst teacher he'd seen. My son was stuck with her.

Tenure should be gotten rid of

We paid school taxes before we had kids,when we had kids in school and now that our kids are out of school,for many many years....I think seniors 65 and older should pay half the school taxes that make up 80% or more of our taxes.

[Onebadcad]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

Teachers in NC once they have tenure are almost impossible to get rid of.
I got a principal to admit he was stuck with a transfer and she was the worst teacher he'd seen. My son was stuck with her.

Almost impossible to terminate a teacher, unless a felony is documented, charged and then proven.

This is from 2009, was 700+ teachers, 15 years later the number is probably double.
Keep in mind these teachers are protected by the unions, and they continue to pay their union dues:

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna31494936

700 NYC teachers paid to do nothing

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day.

June 22, 2009, 6:05 PM EDT / Source: The Associated Press
By By KAREN MATTHEWS

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

"You just basically sit there for eight hours," said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. "I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.' `I've been sitting here for six months.' That sort of thing."

Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.

Union rules blamed
Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

"It is extremely difficult to fire a tenured teacher because of the protections afforded to them in their contract," spokeswoman Ann Forte said.

City officials said that they make teachers report to a rubber room instead of sending them home because the union contract requires that they be allowed to continue in their jobs in some fashion while their cases are being heard. The contract does not permit them to be given other work.

Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said the union and the Department of Education reached an agreement last year to try to reduce the amount of time educators spend in reassignment centers, but progress has been slow.

"No one wants teachers who don't belong in the classroom. However, we cannot neglect the teachers' rights to due process," Davis said. The union represents more than 228,000 employees, including nearly 90,000 teachers.

Many teachers say they are being punished because they ran afoul of a vindictive boss or because they blew the whistle when somebody fudged test scores.

'You're gone'
"The principal wants you out, you're gone," said Michael Thomas, a high school math teacher who has been in a reassignment center for 14 months after accusing an assistant principal of tinkering with test results.

City education officials deny teachers are unfairly targeted but say there has been an effort under Mayor Michael Bloomberg to get incompetents out of the classroom. "There's been a push to report anything that you see wrong," Forte said.

Some other school systems likewise pay teachers to do nothing.

The Los Angeles district, the nation's second-largest school system with 620,000 students, behind New York's 1.1 million, said it has 178 teachers and other staff members who are being "housed" while they wait for misconduct charges to be resolved.

Numbers balloon under Bloomberg
Similarly, Mimi Shapiro, who is now retired, said she was assigned to sit in what Philadelphia calls a "cluster office." "They just sit you in a room in a hard chair," she said, "and you just sit."

Teacher advocates say New York's rubber rooms are more extensive than anything that exists elsewhere.

Teachers awaiting disciplinary hearings around the nation typically are sent home, with or without pay, Karen Horwitz, a former Chicago-area teacher who founded the National Association for the Prevention of Teacher Abuse. Some districts find non-classroom work — office duties, for example — for teachers accused of misconduct.

New York City's reassignment centers have existed since the late 1990s, Forte said. But the number of employees assigned to them has ballooned since Bloomberg won more control over the schools in 2002. Most of those sent to rubber rooms are teachers; others are assistant principals, social workers, psychologists and secretaries.

Once their hearings are over, they are either sent back to the classroom or fired. But because their cases are heard by 23 arbitrators who work only five days a month, stints of two or three years in a rubber room are common, and some teachers have been there for five or six.

The nickname refers to the padded cells of old insane asylums. Some teachers say that is fitting, since some of the inhabitants are unstable and don't belong in the classroom. They add that being in a rubber room itself is bad for your mental health.

"Most people in that room are depressed," said Jennifer Saunders, a high school teacher who was in a reassignment center from 2005 to 2008. Saunders said she was charged with petty infractions in an effort to get rid of her: "I was charged with having a student sit in my class with a hat on, singing."

Sneaking out to the bar
The rubber rooms are monitored, some more strictly than others, teachers said.
"There was a bar across the street," Saunders said. "Teachers would sneak out and hang out there for hours."

Judith Cohen, an art teacher who has been in a rubber room near Madison Square Garden for three years, said she passes the time by painting watercolors of her fellow detainees.

"The day just seemed to crawl by until I started painting," Cohen said, adding that others read, play dominoes or sleep. Cohen said she was charged with using abusive language when a girl cut her with scissors.

Some sell real estate, earn graduate degrees or teach each other yoga and tai chi.

David Suker, who has been in a Brooklyn reassignment center for three months, said he has used the time to plan summer trips to Alaska, Cape Cod and Costa Rica. Suker said he was falsely accused of throwing a girl's test sign-up form in the garbage during an argument.

"It's sort of peaceful knowing that you're going to work to do nothing," he said.

[Yadkin]

Originally Posted by VatorMan

Per student per year ? Here’s the wonderful state of MD.

https://oese.ed.gov/ppe/maryland/

Some elementary students over $20K a year ! My F’n God what the hell have we created ?

Cushy union jobs.

[StudleyJames]

Originally Posted by StudleyJames

The real problem is not many people get involved with there local school budgets, so ridiculous proposals come up on referendums

My real life example is our school board (made up mostly with retired teachers) decided that our high school is to old (built in 1976) and the joinor high school needed to be replaced, so they came up with a $98m proposal for a new highschool, it got voted down. Then, they (school board) said it failed because they did ask for enough money (Bigger high school) so they came back a year later with a $113M dollar proposal and then Covid hit, they now knew this was their opportunity and held a referendum on it and guess what, almost no elderly came to vote (too scared of Covid) and it passes

Now 2 years later the school is built but now the budget does not meet the cost, it has been stated they are $60m short and still need a swimming pool (the other high school has one) and the gym is not big enough

Every time I drive by this new school (now the second largest in the state) I give it the finger. I hope all the young familys with their $300,000 homes and 3 kids enjoy their higher taxes they voted for.

Forgot to add, the population of my town is 25,000 and they built the new school outside the city limits on land that the school system purchase secretly years before

[Onebadcad]

Originally Posted by StudleyJames

Forgot to add, the population of my town is 25,000 and they built the new school outside the city limits on land that the school system purchase secretly years before

My bro lived in central NJ a while back, for about 25 years.
His school districts were small, by design.
He went to a few school board meetings, stated it was the start of sociaiism in our country.
At one they were discussing a land purchase for a new high school.
Problem was there was nothing wrong with current high school.
MUCH BIGGER PROBLEM was they purchased two sizeable lots in the past 5 years for a new high school.
He figured it out, it was a scam, they buy land, get kickbacks, never develop the land, and then re-start with another land purchase.
The previously owned lots are sold at a loss of which no one is told.

[donuts]

Originally Posted by bsmith

look at the growth in administrative pay vs teachers.

actually, the number of administrators over the last 20 years too.
Insane.

Exactly. Number of administrators has grown to insane levels and classroom funding has gone down significantly. Oklahoma even spends $22k a year per student. We got our kids out of public and into private and we pay $26k a year for 4 kids so let’s round that up to $7k per kid. The only thing the public school offers is a shitty lunch and bus transportation.

[Onebadcad]

Originally Posted by donuts

Exactly. Number of administrators has grown to insane levels and classroom funding has gone down significantly. Oklahoma even spends $22k a year per student. We got our kids out of public and into private and we pay $26k a year for 4 kids so let’s round that up to $7k per kid. The only thing the public school offers is a shitty lunch and bus transportation.

And 14 years of unfiltered and unaudited socialist indoctrination.

[donuts]

Originally Posted by Rodnok1

I don't agree with vouchers, they started it here few years back and of course you had to be a certain "social economic" population to get them.
They've changed it some and believe it's open to more, however if you're making 250k a year you shouldn't be eligible at all.
If they want to do something better they should privatize schools. Hold them to a standard aka get paid more if they do better for example. They build the schools and provide transportation.

Bullchit, do you realize that the people who are paying the highest property taxes are the ones in the high income brackets ?? They should be at the front of the line for “vouchers” .

[Datawiz]

Even thought I pay taxes and a large chunk is for the school system, I'm happy to say that GWiz never attended a public school, it it was cheaper than the quoted amounts in this thread. Except for out of state tuition for Georgia Tech.

[VatorMan]

Originally Posted by donuts

Exactly. Number of administrators has grown to insane levels and classroom funding has gone down significantly. Oklahoma even spends $22k a year per student. We got our kids out of public and into private and we pay $26k a year for 4 kids so let’s round that up to $7k per kid. The only thing the public school offers is a shitty lunch and bus transportation.

You had to pay twice. One to send your kid to private and one to send all the other rugrats to public. What a ****ing scam.

[roadpilot]

I saw the writing on the wall decades ago. Tax's were too high then,
now it is worse. Maryland has always been a corrupt state. I had to
move.

[KenHorse]

Teachers unions are little more than a Commucrat money laundering operation

[donuts]

Originally Posted by VatorMan

You had to pay twice. One to send your kid to private and one to send all the other rugrats to public. What a ****ing scam.

Yep, oklah9ma offers vouchers starting this year and we’ve yet to get a response on our application.

Something else is each school gets their finding from the state and local property taxes but they also apply for grants and that money gets thrown into the slush fund . The teachers are the last to get anything , here they cry to the state for raises when there’s plenty of money in the local coffers.

[Frankie the Fink]

St Petersburg FL area is as bad as Broward County; on a scale of 1-10 the public schools come in at 1s and 2s. My granddaughter got choked out on an elementary school playground by some emotionally disturbed minority kid on the playground until a teacher reluctantly intervened. By the 7th grade we could see the bad peer influences starting in and crating a bitchy girl with a bad attitude - so it was off to private school and she'll be senior next year and has colleges and military academies reaching out to her now.

Having said that I wouldn't be a public school teacher anywhere, my 3rd grade teacher neice gets saddled with all the emotionally disturbed kids and she's shown me videos of the little darlings going crazy in class. She has to evacuate the class each episode and call staff to wrap the creepy kids in a gym mat. Great learning environment.

Much of the first 4 years of Japanese schools is teaching kids courtesy, consideration, manners and respect - something US kids sure aren't getting at home in many cases.