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Schools won't stop asking for more until we say 'enough.'
pioneer press ^ | 11-2-12 | joe soucheray

Posted on 11/02/2012 5:28:49 AM PDT by TurboZamboni

Voting "yes" for the children is an agreeable sentiment. The "yes" yard signs are cheerful and evocative of wishing only the best for our children. Not to mention that voting yes, or advising others to vote yes, is an example of virtue that speaks to what is presumed to be the wisdom of an engaged citizenry and a cheerleading business sector.

Voters are being asked to approve an $821.55-per-pupil levy, which folds a new $175-per-pupil increase into the existing $647-per-pupil levy. If the levy passes, local property taxes will bring in $133.5 million toward the district's budget of $652 million a year.

But only one conclusion can be drawn from such a request. It isn't enough; it never will be.

The majority of the levy from 2006 resulted, we are told, in first-graders arriving better equipped to learn because of early-childhood programs funded by the levy. Test scores are up. Dropout rates have been slashed. Proficiency is on the upswing in math and science and reading. This was reported in Monday's Pioneer Press by Michael Newman, chair of the St. Paul Public Schools Foundation

(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Minnesota
KEYWORDS: education; levy; mn; referendum; schools; spending; stpaul; taxes; unions
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Jean O'Connell, chair of the St. Paul school board, says the cost to educate the average K-12 student in St. Paul Public Schools is $13,672 per year. She excludes things like community (adult) education and food-service funds. But if you divide the total $652 million budget by the total number of students, they've got funding up around $17,000 per student now and they are programmed to always want more.


1 posted on 11/02/2012 5:28:52 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
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To: TurboZamboni

$175 extra to pay for more brother-in-law contracts to line the pockets of someone connected to the school board probably.

Whining liberal thought process: “but, but if you dont approve this tax increase you must hate the children and are an awful person”.


2 posted on 11/02/2012 5:33:54 AM PDT by jsanders2001
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To: jsanders2001

In every case, providing more money DOES NOT improve grades.


3 posted on 11/02/2012 5:35:32 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (In the game of life, there are no betting limits)
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To: jsanders2001

Which is why when you ask the board, “when will you have enough”? they can’t answer.

it’s never enough.


4 posted on 11/02/2012 5:40:43 AM PDT by TurboZamboni (Looting the future to bribe the present)
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To: TurboZamboni

“More is never enough!”

The Union always want more, so they can fund Dem’s and stay in control.

Where have “smaller class sizes” resulted in better student performance?


5 posted on 11/02/2012 5:41:01 AM PDT by G Larry (Which of Obama's policies do you think I'd support if he were white?)
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To: TurboZamboni
Administrators that don't teach are eating up the money. They don't have anything to do so they stay busy expelling 8 year-olds with plastic squirt guns. Fire them.
6 posted on 11/02/2012 5:41:12 AM PDT by ryan71
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To: ryan71
Typical stats in Rochester NY.....heavily union area and Dem dominated. The head of the schools can't even speak English.

These were great schools when I was a kid.

7 posted on 11/02/2012 5:43:44 AM PDT by Sacajaweau (r)
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To: Sacajaweau

http://www.localschooldirectory.com/public-school/60885/NY


8 posted on 11/02/2012 5:44:17 AM PDT by Sacajaweau (r)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

> In every case, providing more money DOES NOT improve grades.

I submit that school spending and academic performance are inversely proportional.

Not that correlation necessarily implies causation, but the the correlation should beg the question, “Why?”

Meanwhile, no matter how much money you give to the government school collective, it will never, ever be enough.


9 posted on 11/02/2012 5:45:21 AM PDT by Westbrook (Children do not divide your love, they multiply it.)
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To: jsanders2001

Actually, if the schools were something BESIDES a factory turning out generation after generation of Liberal automatons, I’d consider giving more to them.

As it is, they have more than enough if all they are doing is graduating unemployable freeloaders who can’t think outside the Liberal straight-jacket!

Because of this, I NEVER vote FOR any tax to help the ‘schools’ or just to accommodate the thugs who run the Teachers’ union!


10 posted on 11/02/2012 5:48:03 AM PDT by SMARTY ("The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings. "Henri Frederic Amiel)
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To: TurboZamboni

It isn’t enough; it never will be.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It won’t stop until every government owned, socialist-funded, and single-payer K-12 school in this nation is SHUT DOWN ! Permanently!

Solution: Begin the process of privatizing **all** education. Begin the process of complete separation of school and state.


11 posted on 11/02/2012 5:49:57 AM PDT by wintertime (:-))
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To: Westbrook

Administrators seem to grow on trees when money is dumped into a school system. We see this in Missouri...


12 posted on 11/02/2012 5:52:05 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks (In the game of life, there are no betting limits)
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To: TurboZamboni

I equate the school system to being exactly like children themselves. It’s never enough with a child. It starts with a small piece of candy until they demand you foot the bill for the riding pony!


13 posted on 11/02/2012 5:56:06 AM PDT by Thorliveshere
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To: TurboZamboni; jsanders2001; Eric in the Ozarks; SMARTY

Think about the economic drag on our nation. This $17,000/child/ year is money that is taken out of the economy that is not being used to build the economy.

How many jobs go off shore due to the property taxes and hidden taxes that go toward inefficient government K-12 indoctrination camps? How many businesses never get started because the capital needed is sucked up by the rapacious and Marxist dominated indoctrination camps?

How do we balance state budgets and immediately give the economy a massive boost?

Answer: Give every child a voucher for $6,000 or ( if severely disabled) 1/3 of what it costs to educate them now. Then work like crazy for complete separation of school and state.


14 posted on 11/02/2012 5:58:44 AM PDT by wintertime (:-))
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To: TurboZamboni

Soucheray is good when he doesn’t have to talk about sports.


15 posted on 11/02/2012 6:11:37 AM PDT by Last Dakotan
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To: wintertime
Right!

Our ‘educational system’ is a money pit for sure.

We desperately need some accountability because any money thrown at a system which lacks accountability, is money squandered.

Who needs generation upon generation of people who cannot be employed and who are conditioned to believe that they will be supported by the state? No nation on earth can sustain such a system (much less prosper) under THIS kind of social and economic liability, PERIOD! It is killing us!

16 posted on 11/02/2012 6:28:06 AM PDT by SMARTY ("The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings. "Henri Frederic Amiel)
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To: jsanders2001

I am a former teacher (not that necessarily qualifies me to comment any more than others). What the public schools are purporting to do is something that they simply can never accomplish: taking the place of irresponsible parents.

The key to effective education is support from home: A decent breakfast; support for those who teach; treating education as a necessary and valuable thing; showing an interest in the child’s school work; monitoring the child’s homework and grades; meeting with teachers as needed; particiapting in school events and organizations, like PTA, etc.

Schools cannot do this. Efforts to make up for this (other than perhaps the feeding of them, which is clearly the duty of the parents) will never be as effective as what parents should do. The fact that many parents do not do this is sad, but not the responsibility of the rest of us.


17 posted on 11/02/2012 6:38:52 AM PDT by NCLaw441
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To: Eric in the Ozarks
In every case, providing more money DOES NOT improve grades.

Nail meet hammer. The Austin ISD spends the most $$$$ per pupil in east Austin and the passing rate is well below the rate of west Austin where the per pupil spending is the lowest. Of course, the east Austin schools do have daycare facilities for the single mothers.

18 posted on 11/02/2012 6:47:13 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952 ("It's better to vote for a Republican you don't know than wind up with a dim you don't like".)
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To: wintertime

Here in MN, Dem mayors and their rat city councils in MPLS and St.Paul raise property taxes, then try to blame “the state” for not giving them more “LGA” (’local government aid)
Yet they always seem to have millions for paving sections of streets with expensive cobblestones, replacing normal street lights with fancy,designer street lights, light rail station art grants, new cultural diversity center buildings, etc.


19 posted on 11/02/2012 7:38:46 AM PDT by TurboZamboni (Looting the future to bribe the present)
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To: NCLaw441

“...taking the place of irresponsible parents.”

Pie in the sky thinking. The ability to turn parents around to becoming more responsible is just as attainable as getting better kids by throwing more money at the teachers - never happen. Society is/has been quickly moving away from having responsible parents (raised from being irresponsible kids), and it will likely not happen in the next 20 years, but until a total collapse occurs to start over.


20 posted on 11/02/2012 8:02:06 AM PDT by SgtHooper (The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on the list.)
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