Posted on 03/07/2010 8:18:58 PM PST by Libloather
Kansas City wants to close half its public schools
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, March 7, 2010 (03-07) 12:54 PST
Kansas City, Mo. (AP) - Kansas City was held up as a national example of bold thinking when it tried to integrate its schools by making them better than the suburban districts where many kids were moving. The result was one school with an Olympic-sized swimming pool and another with recording studios.
Now it's on the brink of bankruptcy and considering another bold move: closing nearly half its schools to stay afloat.
Schools officials say the cuts are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case.
Buffeted for years by declining enrollment, political squabbling and a revolving door of leadership, the district's fortunes are so bleak that Superintendent John Covington has said diplomas given to many graduates "aren't worth the paper they're printed on."
Kansas City is among the most striking examples of the challenges of saving urban school districts. The city used gobs of cash to improve facilities, but boosting lagging test scores and stemming the exodus of students were more elusive. Like other big-city districts, it finds itself struggling to become more than just the last resort for large pockets of poverty in the urban core.
Some districts like Boston and Cleveland have tried busing in students from other neighborhoods, while others such as Chicago have built magnet schools with specialized facilities and curriculums.
The latest possible solution for Kansas City is the plan Covington submitted to the school board last week that called for closing 29 out of 61 schools to eliminate a projected $50 million budget shortfall.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
big gov liberals thikn pools and rap songs will save edukashon... idiots.
Why close them? Start a REIT, pool the schools they don’t want together, do an IPO, and take them private. Keep the cash.
What the Left understands is that you cannot mint DNA or work ethic...but to isulate power, you can bring the scale down so there is no distinction of success and people move ahead unprepared for the real world, well, the real world of today.
Unions, trial lawyers, community organizers, teacher’s organizations and other Leftists are pushing for the USSR, it’s obvious.
KC is just the next example of big city Dem politics failing, againg and again.
It’s the Left screwing up everything. Just another example.
Too late for a good rant, so I’ll save it for later, but just think about everything that is screwed up, and think about who is involved in the screwing up, and VOILA!!!
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right on
right on
“When Fletcher, 33, was a teenager, he transferred from a posh private school in the city to attend a showpiece of the desegregation plan, a high school with a high-profile fencing program. He, like many, wonders where the money has gone”
Wow - talk about not getting the point of an educational...
My daughter goes to a private school. They don't hand out "A"s. She's busting her behind to get it done, working to qualify for scholarships. The lame part? She's competing with public schools where they apparently are handing out "A"s. In the liberal world of political correctness, every student is an "A" student.
lol!!
Gee, I really like my acting class with its own TV studio and well paid actors dropping by to give speeches and give us tips... I have no idea where all the money goes”
Wrong way around. It is the education establishment that has done this, and they are doing it everywhere, but in some places the insanity is better concealed.
Since at least the Carter administration, the education establishment has virtually owned the Democrat Party. The teachers’ unions alone have more political operatives at the state and local level than the Rs and Ds combined.
The article doesn't mention that the school district brought in a top Russian fencing instructor who spoke no English, so they paid for a translator, too. (sigh)
LSAggie (posting on hubby's account)
This strikes me as an extremely key paragraph. Why should they have as many schools as they once did when they have half the students they did a decade ago and less than a quarter of the number of students they had 40 years ago?
“And to this day, the district continues to lose students. In the late 1960s enrollment peaked at 75,000, dropped to 35,000 a decade ago and now sits at just under 18,000.”
The right understands it as well. They are more practical in that they already know it is a waste of time/effort/money to lower the bar.
THE END.
KC schools lost their accreditation in 2000. Don’t blame the folks for fleeing the school district.
Things always look clearer when viewed through the retrospectroscope and education is no exception. Abandoning neighborhood schools in favor of forced busing was but one more example of things that sound great on paper but don't work out nearly as well in practice.
What a great example of the law of unintended consequences!
One thing about government is you can fail unlimited times and still keep getting money to fail again. The problem isn’t poverty. It’s the wrong values or a lack of values.
Competiton is the way we survive, as you know, complacency, sloth and mediocrity are what are left when a 40% of maximum effort is produced.
The idea of finding a way to achieve, be it business, education, trades or athletics is our way, not a pre-programmed bureaucratic busybody.
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