Strangely enough, I wanted to go to school for a little while longer. My school is closing one week early, which better than many of the other districts in my State
Apparently airlines and other countries are good enough to be bailed out, but not schools. And never mind that they are the states’ responsibility.
I liked Anna Quindlen’s suggestion in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago: Let’s pretend the U.S. states are foreign countries and send them some aid.
And never mind the offal enclosed in the tax cut bill. This is serious shit - our freakin’ schools can’t operate! And this is one of the relatively well off school districts from what I understand.
Saw on CNN last night that voters in Multnomah County (Portland & environs) just passed a county income tax to raise money to offset the loss of state funding. The Portland teachers did their part, too, agreeing to work for 10 days without pay.
cite?
citeable area highlighted
Gee, my school sure coulda used a cut of the $330 billion.
What’s the total at? 44 states bankrupt?
This happened before in Oregon in a lot of districts in the mid/ late 1980’s. The state instituded a ‘safty net’ and took over a major portion of all the school district funding at that time. They also guaranteed then when they took that over that the schools would not run into these issues again.
I was lucky I had already graduated when it happened. My sister was told that she may not graduate because they closed early 2 years of her high school and the students didn’t have enough hours to graduate according to state guidlines.
Why spend the money on schools when we can blow it on a new stadium for a baseball team we haven’t even got yet!
The situation here in Oregon is awfull, it is not just the schools that are being cut. My mother in law works in an emergency room in a Portland hospital. They have been overwhelmed with mental patients That could be doing quite well if the state could continue to provide their drugs and outpatient treatment. So the sutuation is that they are often transported by ambulance to the E.R., admited and spend three days in a psych. ward and are then released with another three days worth of meds. Total cost appox. $8,000-$10,00. the cost of provideding meds that would have prevented the crisis $250 per month. I could go on and on with stories like that my wife is a teacher in a rural school dist. that is closing on of the schools, in spite of the fact that they will have more kids next year. I really feel the state legeslature need to grow a set, show some leadership and raise some additional revenue, but I doubt that will happen. We have a huge number of people whow when asked what the proper level of taxation is can only reply “Less”.
Yep. No money, anywhere. We just don’t have the money. My college has cut a dozen classes, consolidated classes (my spanish class was twice its normal size this term because there’s only one being taught by that teacher this term) and added fees upon fees. The libraries are still scrabbling for funds. I’m so sick of not being able to go to the library on Mondays because they only have enough cash to keep them open 5 days a week. My sister does not only get out earlier, but throughout the year has had a few random days of no school because they simply can’t afford it. She isn’t allowed to take her textbooks home because they don’t have enough cash to go around. The hospitals aren’t doing very well either, as G-RAY said. My parents both work in the largest local hospital and the situation is always deteriorating.
I heard about this over at SAAN. What the hell is going on?
And we WONDER what’s wrong in our society?
:mad:
Especially why spend it on schools that have had a good portion of sports programs dropped due to budget cuts. IIRC City schools now have corporate funding saving spring athletics for the remainder of this school year, then they’re SOL for the next year. I live in city limits and my neighbors are all pretty upset about all this going on (I have no kids.)
OTOH, we get to pay more taxes next year. That’ll fix problem right away … :rolleyes:
Especially why spend it on schools that have had a good portion of sports programs dropped due to budget cuts. IIRC City schools now have corporate funding saving spring athletics for the remainder of this school year, then they’re SOL for the next year. I live in city limits and my neighbors are all pretty upset about all this going on (I have no kids.)
OTOH, we get to pay more taxes next year. That’ll fix the problem right away … :rolleyes:
The situation in TN was a little different last year. The legislature couldn’t agree whether to pass an income tax or raise the sales tax so they just shut down the government. I was taking summer school classes at college and since they kept promising they’d have a budget, we didn’t know we were going to close until about two days before it happened. As an extra added bonus of fun, the teachers all had to move up the finals so the classes could count before the shutdown.
In the end we've ended up with(in Memphis) a sales tax of 9 and 3/4 percent which is not enough to pay for all of the government programs so round and round we go. And I'm newly convinced that my government officials are assclowns.
-Lil
Holy cow, I thought my school had it hard. At least we can finish our school year. How the heck is California still at the bottom of the ranking of state education when everyone else is so much more screwed up??
Hey, uh, I’m sorry to say it, but this kind of information really scares me. What is happening to us? I’m actually sitting here pondering Memorial Day and imagining the chaff of the public school system that has bootstrapped Korea, Vietnam, Granada, Beirut and the Gulf Wars, to name a few that have personally impacted me.
Why aren’t we doing something about it?
And yes, I mean us, on this Board.
yikes
Grenada
Parenthetically, I’d hate for you to think I meant “Grain Island” out in the middle of the Bay of Biscayne. <guffaw>
<sheepish grin>
I agree that we spend a bit too much on foreign aid, but why blame this problem on federal spending? I submit that the state is in a bad way because of mismanagement. Remember this fiasco the next time an incumbant is running for office.
The more I read about local/state/regional/national/supranational governenments the world over, the more convinced I become that politicians are the very worst people to have running anything of consequence.
Our democracies lead to short-termism which always seems to lead to long term problems. Maybe a 20 year dictatorship is the answer…
:shrug:
I am SO sending my kids to private school.
In Canada.