Well said, wintertime. I hope that your church ministers will focus some efforts to deal with this important problem.
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I think your $100 bill idea is a good idea.
I had a personal interview with one of the regional leaders of our church. It turns out that he had been a school board member for 8 years. Essentially, he blew me off. It was the usual:
1) The parents don’t care. ( These parents **DO** care a **LOT**! The proof is that they bring them to tutoring every week. )
2) The kids can’t speak English. ( These kids speak perfect English and have since their Head Start days.)
3) Broken homes. ( These all come from two parent homes with dedicated parents.)
4) Behavior problems. ( These kids are extremely well behaved and very polite and nice children.)
In other words he blamed the kids and parents.
One of the problems with the government schools in counties like mine is that there is an entrenched education-industrial complex. Our school district is the single largest employer in the county. It’s payroll is by far the largest in the county. No other business in the county comes close. Therefore....When it comes to either eliminating, reducing, or in away reforming the government schools there is tremendous resistance to this. Too many people are feeding at the government school pig trough.
wintertime wrote: “One of the problems with the government schools in counties like mine is that there is an entrenched education-industrial complex. Our school district is the single largest employer in the county. It’s payroll is by far the largest in the county. No other business in the county comes close. Therefore....When it comes to either eliminating, reducing, or in away reforming the government schools there is tremendous resistance to this. Too many people are feeding at the government school pig trough.”
..... Similar situation here in MA. Teacher’s union members get hired into the school bureaucracies and also run for school committee positions. The entire teachers’ contract negotiation ultimately becomes a rigged game.
I remember the early days of the teachers’ union here in MA, when every strike was billed as an action reluctantly taken “for the children”. I wonder what their latest slogan is.