Voters to Schools: Drop Dead
Stats from 69 instances where tax measures for schools were on Illinois ballots show that 65 percent of them failed. Last fall, 75 percent of 51 school tax initiatives failed.
It just shows that anytime you do something out in the open and actually ask through a democratic process, people will short-sightedly slap school measures down.
Yet untold millions of tax dollars are given to businesses and corporations by government entities each year. The only difference is that the public have no voice in the matter and rarely even are aware of the deals.
Yet when schools hold out the cup, no one will so much as drop in a dime.
I can't understand where people's priorities are if they don't put education near the top of worthy goals to support. And the people who justify their stinginess because they don't have kids in the system are perhaps the worst.
posted by The Inside Dope @ 4/07/2005
3 comments
3 Comments:
(putting on my cynic hat)
The game here is to only allow voters to vote on things they're almost certain to approve. Amazingly, this situation so frustrates them that they'll self-inflict these kinds of injuries.
I spent some years in New York State (non-NYC and a long time ago) and they played a version of the same game there. The school district budget was voted on yearly, but.... When a budget was voted down, the district was free to adopt a "contingency budget" that included everything except school busing in excess of state-mandated minimums and school sports. What a racket.
the local schools are losing their best and most brightest teachers by doing all this. they will all leave teaching and then who will be left to teach the children?
Very true Captain. What sort of mixed message are we sending when on one hand we are trying massively to recruit new and bright students to pursue a teaching career, and then once they've done so, we treat them like cattle and hire and fire them contantly as a way to cope with deep budget cuts and increasing unfunded mandates from the federal government?
Beginning teachers have next to zero job security, and so who can blame them if they're not the most devoted? After all, teaching is only a part-time job to them, and they can be laid off at the drop of a hat.
It would be hard to seriously recommend a teaching career to anyone given the way they are treated in the current climate.
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