A sobering look at Georgia's educational budget woes

My late father (Concord (Mass.) High class of '60, by the way), who never met a tax he didn't hate, always grudgingly pulled the lever "yes" for any school tax hike request, realizing that a good, well-funded school district always made his house and neighborhood more valuable. He did this even after his two sons were no longer of school age.

 

Isn't Georgia the state where if you got a certain GPA in high school, you get free tuition at one of the state schools?

It sounds great, but if true, I'm not surprised the place is in the financial state it's in.

I'm a California native, but if you live there you pretty much have to send your kids to private school if you want them to get a decent education. It was bad when I was in school 20 years ago and it's gotten much, much worse.

 

One school district outside of Georgia lost their state accrediation. It was basically the death penalty.

http://www.nsba.org/MainMenu/SchoolLaw/Issues/Governance/News/GADistrictAccreditation.aspx

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/clayton/stories/2008/08/28/clayton_schools_accreditation.html

The lady who used to run Richmond City Schools probably should have been thrown in prison for how she handled the funds. She now teaches at Harvard.

 

And when was Proposition 13 passed? That's no coincidence. Ca;lifornia has the most inequitable tax structure in the country and it is absolutely killing the state, and by extension its once-model system of public education.

That said, I'd match the top Cali public schools against Mater Dei, Mitty or any other private school any time.

 

Most of these districts no doubt are too top heavy in administration -- which will be the last place to get severely cut.

I don't get why some one-school districts where everyone is in a K-12 has to have a principal and a superintendent who makes the same amount of money as people in large districts.

 

I was speaking in more general terms, but I do think that appointed boards tend to have fewer knuckleheads.

 

The Hope Scholarship, what you are refering to, is funded by the lottery, not taxes. At least it still was 10 years ago when I lived there. The Hope was written into the state constitution to be paid for by the lottery as a means to get it passed in the early 90's.

 

It still is, and that particular system has worked fairly well. Unlike other states -- Florida comes to mind -- the lottery funding has not to this point been siphoned off to other portions of the state budget. When it was voted in, the list of uses was pretty narrowly defined.There's HOPE and there's lottery funded Pre-K and some school technology grants, but that's about it. OTOH, there has been some push and pull with the GPA point. Secondary school teachers came under increasing pressure to "round grades up" in order for students to qualify for HOPE. Knowing this -- at least, this is what I've heard, not really something I've researched -- colleges have begun weighting GPAs from certain secondary school systems to offset it. Plus, once the kids get into college they have to maintain a certain GPA there to keep the HOPE scholarship. I'm willing to chalk that up to the inherent risk of abuse any government program carries; this one seems to have worked better than a lot of others. Personally, I need it to be around about another six years.

 

Wyoming has a program like that as well, the Hathaway scholarships. Helps keep in-state kids in-state.

They also offer 1 1/2 times in-state tuition to children of out-of-state graduates. Given how low UW's tuition is, it can be a real bargain, depending on what state you live in.

 

How about this?

Do away with school buses. Have parents drop students off and pick them up, or have day cares do the shuttling.

You want to save money, do away with buses.

My district has 24,000 students and we spend about $15 million getting them back and forth to school.

All a school division is required to do is open the doors. Buses are "fat" teabaggers.

 

I'm already living that in my school district. We live three miles from my kids' high school, and there's no bus service. Good thing my employer is very understanding.

Then again, my school district had the cash to carpet all three of the high schools' football fields, and move the ball diamonds and tennis courts at my kids' school.

 

No buses in the entire district, Wolv?