The school district also actively recruits kids from other districts, then they complain they have too many kids and not enough space! Duh!
Interesting. I am a public school teacher, but I DON'T complain about such anymore. In fact, I love any housing development that goes up or any family that has lots of kids:). I think what they don't realize is that when the number of students goes down, people get layed off. I taught at an elementary school that had 1500 students once. We just all buckled together and had a wonderful year for most everyone involved. Yes, I like smaller classes as well as the next guy, but I think they should realize that I would rather have too many than not enough.
I think some teachers in other states can't comprehend what we have here. We don't have specialist teachers, school nurses, full-time librarians, classroom teacher aides (though there are some general ones), etc. Most elementaries have between 800-1000 (middle schools average about 1000-1500 kids and high schools about 2300) kids and we have the highest class sizes in the nation. We have the fewest administrators and spend the least in the nation too. Yet I think we do a pretty good job on the whole here.
Again, I'm not complaining if there's a little overcrowding. Each student, I have found, is a precious resource. I know what the other side is and it isn't pretty.
I believe only $0.40/$1.00 goes toward classroom education here. The rest is spent on debt service and administrators.
We also have a classroom limit of 22 kids. I have yet to see a graph that shows 23 kids in the classroom causes test scores to plummet and 21 kids creates geniuses. I went to school in the 70's with 35 in my class, we turned out fine. OK, well, some are liberals, but I think my point is valid.
Emotion drives too much of the debate.