The state requires me to own a car under penalty of law..

Wow, the school district makes even the kindergartners adhere to the 2-mile walk area? That’s kind of harsh.

Where I live, kindergartners can take the bus if they’d have to walk further than one-half mile. It’s 1.5 miles for first through 5th, and 2.5 miles for middle school.

Unfortunately for my middle-schooler, when they say 2.5 miles, they apparently mean as the crow flies. We used to live two blocks from the school, now we live in an area that is still the “walk area” (i.e., no bus service). Like most middle-schoolers my kid cannot fly, and the shortest way he can walk to school is 2.64 miles, as measured by me in my car and by Mapquest.

Actually, the shortest route would be via highway–he can’t walk that, because in the great and expensive overhaul of this highway in the last few years, the PTB did not see fit to add a foot/bicycle path along with the light rail and the extra lanes. So that one’s out.

The walk problem is, he has to get across that same highway some way. Not every street crosses it. The streets that do cross it tend to be major streets, with access ramps, a stretch with no sidewalk whatsoever, the sidewalk right next to a six-, eight-, or ten-lane artery where it does exist, and other hazardous walking conditions. The safe way across it will take him almost a mile out of his way–which is no big deal in a car, but a slightly bigger deal walking or on a bicycle. So any way you look at it, if he walks or bikes, he will have to walk (or bike) further than 2.5 miles.

This has me really pissed off, actually, because when I considered this house I called the school district to find out if he’d be assigned to the same school and they said, “You betcha! But he’s right at the edge of the area.” So…if he’s at the very edge of the area…and he’s in the walk area…and they don’t provide bus service for kids who do school of choice…then where the hell are they bringing all those kids on buses from, anyway?

(I should add that bus service is something I would actually pay for. But the school board decided it would be some kind of bad precedent to allow that choice.)

However, you would be bitching if your child didn’t get the copies sent home because she didn’t provide the copy paper necessary to do it and the teacher…who probably gets paid less than you, would rather make her house payment then cover your kid’s supplies.

BUT MY TAX DOLLARS…ggggrrrrrrr. Interesting how everyone in my state gets right on board voting for those tax cuts and then they complain when their schools and support systems suffer.

So this years ammendment WILL pass, everything will end up being cut like it has been in the past and JTGAIN is going to again come out swinging with more entitlement rants.

I also live in Florida, and the inability of [del]some[/del] many fellow residents to comprehend that the small amount that they pay in property taxes every year gets divided among a large group of departments and often doesn’t cover anywhere near the services they get from their county is ridiculous. This is an issue that’s got my attention more frequently because I am a county employee that deals with the public and I get more people who will complain about how much they pay in taxes and, in the same breath, complain about the lack of services they get from [insert county department here]; it really doesn’t make any sense, as most of them are paying an incredibly small amount of my wages to complain to me about how they’re not getting a good enough bargain. It’s as if county employees are all supposed to be subsisting on $5 per day so that they can pay next to nothing in property taxes and get the super expensive, super efficient services. You really cannot have it both ways. It also seems like half of our state doesn’t care about the education system and doesn’t want to pay into it because their grandchildren aren’t going to school in Florida, and thus they can’t see the bigger picture regarding how education affects the entire economy that they are a part of.

I sincerely hope that there aren’t enough stupid people out there who’ll vote for that amendment; it’s a guarantee that Florida will turn into a shithole full of uneducated, underemployed wageslaves.