Thursday, October 13, 2016

Save Our Public Schools





With the election coming down to its final month, everybody is talking about the ballot questions. One that I find particularly important, and popular among the public is question 2.  For those of you who are living under a rock and don’t know what will be on the ballad in the 2016 election, question 2 is this, Charter school expansion; The question, if approved, would let state education officials approve up to 12 new charter schools a year.

From my point of view saying yes to this, and approving new charter schools and giving funding to charter schools will cause nothing but trouble for public school kids. By funding these charter schools, we are ultimately taking over $1 billion away from public schools every year.  Yes, we would be helping out charter schools, but what about public schools and those children, don’t they matter too?

The answer is yes they do. As someone who went to public school for 12 years I know that they don’t get a lot of funding and schools are always cutting programs due to lack of funding. In my middle school for example they almost got rid of the art program. Our school didn’t have enough money to keep up with buying art supplies and anything we did have was 20 years old or broken. The school had no funding to supply these materials, but luckily the community pulled together donating enough supplies to save the program for at least 2 years.



If Charter schools weren’t getting all the public school funding, then schools like mine wouldn’t have to rely on these families (already buying school supplies for every other subject) but could rely on the school funding to supply the necessary materials for students to learn.  


My question is why should we give all of this money to schools that don’t even exist when we could be giving them to ones that do. There are so many children with so much potential to do great things and there all in public schools, if the school has the funding it deserves these children can grow their education and become the best students they can be. If over $1 billion is going to the charter schools, then we are just throwing out 1 billion opportunities for public schools to get supplies and everything else they need to help these kids reach their full potential. 

3 comments:

  1. I, for one, await further ballad questions from our latest Nobel Laureate.

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  2. I'm sorry that you went to a bad middle school. I was able to send my son to a good Charter school, so I've seen the other side of the issue.

    You ask, "Why give money to schools that don't even exist?" Because there is a large body of evidence showing that throwing good money at bad schools at best has no impact, and often makes outcomes worse.

    Why? Because a school district which is incapable of using the funding it has in an effective matter is not going to miraculously change into a high-performing system if it's budget is raised.

    Yes, your art program was at risk. So where was the money going instead? Was the school district spending proportionally more on other middle schools, perhaps because of racial bias? Was it spending a large percentage of the budget on administrators? Were there no-bid "sweetheart deals" for purchasing supplies, cleaning services, fuel oil, and school bus service?

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  3. The problem I'm seeing with this ballot question is that the paid advertisements I've seen are trying to get your "yes' vote by saying that this would not take away funding for public schools. This is absolutely untrue. Public schools are effected by this. I have no problem with charter schools, and actually think they do great things for the kids that could benefit from them. BUT I don't think we need to be setting public school kids at a disadvantage to fund them.

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