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Budget cuts for Boston Public Schools is a terrible idea
By wadekelsey on Thu, 03/24/2016 - 11:40am
Education is not something that can be neglected. Especially in a world, where 30% of students are unable to enroll into the college due to insufficient amount of knowledge. It seems, like the government does not care about younger generation.
11 million cut in budget means that the industry of education will lose quite a bit of money involved. And as we live in capitalistic country, we know, that loss of money in a business means that it has to lower its expenses.
In most of cases what suffers is the quality. And it is kind of terrifying to imagine, how our public schools lower quality of education even more than they already did.
And this is a real problem, if to compare USA to Scandinavia countries or even our neighbor, Canada, our education system appears to be in a really bad condition.
News about a protest kind of made my day. It is great, that parents actually care for the future of their kids.
As the article says, the cut threatened teaching positions, librarian jobs, extracurricular activities, music, arts and other programs. While public school system is far from being perfect they should invest money in it, rather than cut budgets.
It is not surprising, that kids are often taught not useful subjects and new ones that are actually important in a modern world are rarely created at all.
As a father I find it is shocking that we do not even have internet safety classes in our schools. I had to install pumpic parental monitoring to ensure my son’s safety. Because, you know, children are not taught how to deal with sexual predators and other stuff found online.
Our children are basically unable to compete with standards that are being set by other countries. It may to horrible consequences, like fall of our economy, lowering health standards, etc.
It is not something to joke with.
The protest, mentioned earlier, luckily had some effect on the government. Cuts were lowered to $1.3 million budget cut. Which is still not the result we need.
We need to invest in education, because it is the only investment that pays off.
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Comments
sexual predators
"Because, you know, children are not taught how to deal with sexual predators and other stuff found online."
Pretty sure that's the job of a parent, not a school official.
I agree, schools are charged
I agree, schools are charged now with preparing people for college or industry. I don't expect schools to teach them everything they need to know to survive in the world. Teaching kids to be safe online should fall to the parent, just as parents should teach kids about other important life skills, like being polite and how to use toilet paper.
I agree
I am also slightly concerned that he feels the need to track everything his son does on his phone. Is it really easier to violate your child's privacy than to teach him not to talk to older men in chat rooms? (And if the answer is yes, why buy him a smartphone to begin with?)
Incorrect. As a teacher, I
Incorrect. As a teacher, I can assure that this is, and should be, stuff taught in school. In addition to what is recommended to be taught at home.
Must be this new math.
A $13 million increase is now a budget cut. Damn common core!
Well charter schools are
Well charter schools are draining the system of money, so what do you expect, and union busting Baker wants even more charter schools to further weaken the unions. Well, some unions, I dont seem him cracking down this way on police or fire unions, even Scott Walker, who broke down all the public unions in his state, left the police and fire unions alone, since they vote for him and dont care about other union workers.
It is not surprising, that
Based on that sentence, I can only assume that the schools you attended suffered from budget cuts as well. Then again, maybe there was plenty of money in the budget, and you just didn't pay attention in class.
Commas, how do they, work?
Commas, how do they, work?
The US has been throwing
The US has been throwing exponentially more money at the quagmire of public education since the 1960s with increasingly worse results.
Money isn't the problem. The bloated bureaucracy (devouring the money before a penny makes it to the classroom) and the deteriorating family structure in some demographics is.
And yet ...
Standardized test scores in Boston keep going up and Massachusetts now ranks up near the top of international test results, you know the ones that used to be thrown in our face about how much better education is in Finland or Taiwan or wherever.
Money
A huge amount of education money is actually spent on programs that compensate for inadequate household resources, or programs that supplant medical therapies for cognitive or mental health issues.
I fully support providing therapies to help special needs children to reach their potential. It's very important work and is highly beneficial to those students, since many of them do learn to be productive members of society. However, it takes a lot of money, and it's money that the Average Student simply won't see reflected in their classroom experience.
Which city services should be cut?
I mean, they would need to get the $11 million from somewhere, so where? Close some fire houses? Less cops? Scale back the hours at the community centers? Less libraries?
Unless you've got $11 million burning a hole in your pocket, you need some concrete ideas.
GE, We Bring Good Things To Life
I can think of a source for the money.
And how much is GE getting/not paying this year?
And mind you, I am willing to take that money at face value, without discounting and contributions after things are primed, like meals and hotel taxes, actual increases in the value of their property minus the RE tax incentives.
In short, if GE wasn't coming here, the $11 million "deficit" still exist.
It's many factors..
It's a very two sided issue, my friend. There are kids who also simply don't want to conform to school standards due to terrible household conditions. I know because I acted like that until junior year. Teachers should do a lot more to realize that we're not these static faces behind desks. The teachers who had the most vibrant, welcoming and stoic personalities were usually the ones that I ended up acing in.
Funny....just heard on WBZ AM today.....
..that the council just approved the LARGEST school budget in history. which is it?
largest school budget ever
that's correct - it's the largest school budget to date. like it was last year. and the year before. and the year before that. education costs rise every year and so must the budget, to compensate for those increases. so while the mayor gave the boston public schools a higher budget this year than was given last year, he did not provide a large enough budget to cover all of the budge expense of the school system. so, yes, it is both things: largest budget since last year and still not enough to cover costs.
Community Colleges
Since the public school system is failing many of our students it's up to the community college system to pick up the slack. We welcome everyone - special needs, former drug addict, the kid who just slacked off in school, military veterans, adults returning to change careers or just get ahead in the workplace, and, especially, the poor.
Sounds great, right? A second (or third or fourth) chance for everyone who needs it.
Community college professors just got a new contract with a measly 2% raise and our budgets are also being slashed. Our community college faculty are some of the lowest paid in the country. Our science labs are limping along on equipment purchased decades ago.
So much for education being considered important.