Way past time for another Battle of Athens in this country on a national basis. By any other name that would be called a Civil War. Past time for that as well.
In the span of about 10 miles in County, Oklahoma are three very small independent school districts. Each with a Superintendent and full compliment of “support employees”. The head of each snake is paid a bout $170K a year of taxpayer money and a handsome benefit package that just about nobody in the community can even dream of. Pretty damn ridiculous I’d say.
We pay $13,00 a year for each child’s education in the US. That is $390,000 per 30 student class. The teacher may get $75K in wages and benefits. The other $315,000 goes for the building, utilities and “support” staff. We got by with teachers, a secretary, a janitor and ONE principal in the 500 student grade school I went to 50 years ago. I don’t think we had the equivalent of 500 x 10,500 = $5.25 MILLION a year in overhead for the building, janitor, secretary and principal.
I know you meant $13,000 and I do wish that we could get an edit capability here on FR but that is the perfectionist in me.
As to this post and topic, I think much of this can be traced to the pernicious effect of nationalizing education and the Dept. of Education (DoEd) and the hand-in-glove partnership with the "Education Establishment" (defining it as the local-to-national bureaucracy, labor unions, academia and big government advocates!) There are MANDATES that come tied to national funding and range from classroom aides for handicapped children to local bureaucrats to count minorities and monitor civil-rights violations and other offenses against victimhood classes. Few ever imagined how invasive the government could get when a cabinet level department of Education and Welfare was first formally proposed by President Harding in 1923 and actually done by Eisenhower in 1953 as HEW. Of course, it was President Carter who made the DoEd independent in 1979 and that is also when the intrusion really got rolling.
Just think, all those people in Washington and in every state, just wanting to improve our kid's education AND try out every theory they can find, perfect the environment, save the whales and every other 'good cause!' SHUDDER!
Ditto that!!