> I’ve taught in schools where there are literally roomfuls of books, computers, etc that have never been used. But they keep stockpiling the stuff because people are afraid they might not get the same amount of money in their budgets next year.

You do realize that you’ve described something that the rest of us would consider fraud, right?

I’ll bet that your district or one near by has been complaining about a lack of money. If that’s what you do with what you get, why should you get more?

People cost $40k/year plus benefits, or easily $50k/year. Cutting stuff won’t do that, unless there’s a lot of kick-backs going on.

Does anyone think that CA’s govt wasn’t providing $25B in essential services that it’s providing today? I thought not. Given that, surely no one will object to calling that $25B increase “spending on foolishness”.

Ponderosa seems to think that CA’s schools are taking a hit, that they’re actually getting less money than in 2005. If that’s true, CA is diverting money from schools to pay for the foolishness spending, so it’s even worse than the $25B figure suggests.

However, CA’s govt is largely a creature of the various public employees unions, the teachers being close to or at the head of the pack. In other words, Ponderosa’s union has been protecting and promoting that foolishness. If he’s correct about diversion, they’ve even been diverting money from schools for more foolishness….

If CA teachers insist on telling us that all state spending is essential, they don’t get to complain when education takes a hit along with everything else. If, instead, they’re willing to argue that there’s $25-30B of foolishness to cut elsewhere, great – education doesn’t get cut.

We’ve previously established that public school advocates are primarily concerned with funding. We’re about to find out if they think that education funding is special. If they don’t act as if it is….

I saw a comparison of admin/non-teaching personnel between DC Public Schools and the Archdiocese of Baltimore (almost exactly the same number of students); the Archdiocese had something like 15 and DCPS had something like 1350!!!

I would want to see that comparison.

Washington, D.C. has approximately 600,000 people (from here:http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html). About 13% of them are K-12 school age … so figure about 78,000 school age kids. If we figure that ½ of them go to the public schools (my guess is that it is higher), then we have about 40K students. With only 15 support staff?

That 15 includes janitors? And the principal(s)? And secretaries? And the librarians? None of these are teaching personnel, and I have a very difficult time believing that the Baltimore parochial schools can get by with only 15 people to do these jobs.

-Mark Roulo

http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html

A number of years ago, I saw a comparison of admin/non-teaching personnel between DC Public Schools and the Archdiocese of Baltimore (almost exactly the same number of students); the Archdiocese had something like 15 and DCPS had something like 1350!!! It’s seen as a jobs program; education isn’t the priority, which is just as well since they don’t educate many of their students.

Montgomery County, MD does much better academically than DC because they have fewer of the problems Rob enumerates, but they still have enough bureaucracy to choke a whole stable full of horses. Just because they don’t make the money end up in the classroom doesn’t mean they don’t have the money; they just don’t use it properly. In my experience, that’s typical.

The political class in ALL states and the federal government thinks that the people exist for the government. Until they are shown that it is the other way around, the talk about how much is too much or how little is too little really makes no difference.

It’s 3% of their highest yearly salary for each year they’ve worked. So if a teacher had worked for 30 years and his highest salary was $90K, his base pension would be (3% of $95K) x 30 years = 81K.

If you work for 35 years it would be (3% of $95K) x 30 = $85K.

“On top of that, they can retire at age 50 with a pension of 3% of their highest yearly pay for each year they’ve worked, assuming they’ve worked 30 years.”