I bumped into some guy from town the other night at a local restaurant's bar.
He said he was on his way to some benefit at the country club.
CaptiousNut - What for?
Dude - It's a fundraiser for the schools...
Hah!
They already spend a mind-blowing $26,000 per pupil, and they need more?
AND these Morons will voluntarily contribute???!!!
CaptiousNut - How much does it cost to go?
Dude - Well as a family we gave five thousand...
Wowsers! (Tickets started at $300 per couple.)
Dude - It's a way around the state cap....if the town spends any more money the state will reduce its aid. All the wealthy towns do this...
Another attendee, the next day explained further:
OtherDude - Last year it was to install WiFi everywhere. This year it's for smartboards...
Apparently the foundation simply picks a sleek new *cause* each year, preying on the misguided fears of these wealthy parents. Yeah, without smartboards....their kids will *fall behind* everyone else. Right.
As I said, they already have PLENTY OF MONEY in town. The superintendent makes $270,000 per year to achieve the worst academic results of all six towns that abut our district!
OtherDude - But how much of that $26,000 per pupil goes to pensions?
CaptiousNut - Not that much, now anyway.
You see, he has an answer on the tip of his tongue, no doubt echoed by the *foundation* and other naive folk that continue to ignore the school district's criminal fiscal irresponsibility, runaway pensions, and ridiculous salaries; naive (guilt-ridden?) folk that just bend over and take the inexorably escalating property taxes.
The most Moronic assumption of all, however, is that they all just equate money spent with educational outcomes.
There's a verse in the Bible - Proverbs 29:12:
If a ruler listens to lies, all his officials become wicked.
While that may be very true right now in Washington....a proverbial spin on it might well read:
He that hath fatal Moronic assumptions, is ripe for rampant exploitation.
It's just too bad they are dragging the rest of us, the remnant who understands what's really going on, down with them.
They think they are subsidizing smartboards....but all they are doing is subsidizing pensions and incompetence.
4 comments:
Yeah, the quantity of wasted resources is mind boggling.
It's also stunning that people who are manifestly so dumb can have so much money to throw around.
But look at the bright side: they are giving their own money voluntarily instead of sticking it to everyone by raising taxes.
Or maybe that is coming next. Ugh.
There's no bright side. They are propping up the failed system in every respect. And the parents here in town, wealthy as $hit, subsidize the teachers too by paying insane prices for tutors. Here's a recent *letter to the editor*:
"...many families have the resources, we compensate for poor teachers or difficult curriculum by getting our children tutors or providing them with our own time and knowledge to fill in the gaps. Giving children more tests to evaluate teachers is an injustice to our children and an incomplete and misleading indicator by which to judge teachers.
Do you know that there is a waiting list for math tutors at $90 - $100 hour in this town? So many kids are struggling with math at the middle school and high school level, but your test scores won’t reflect this, because these students get extra help outside school. Perhaps this information should weigh in on teacher evaluations. If a class average is A-, but 50 percent of the class is using a tutor, I think something is wrong with either the teacher or the curriculum. How will your evaluations capture this? After paying very high school taxes, I have bitterly paid for both math and English tutors for my children."
Hmmm ... how interesting.
Parents are wealthy enough to pay $100/hour for a tutor but not wealthy enough to move their kids into a private school.
I suppose that's what upper "middle" class really means.
Private schools around here are pretty expensive - AND are not necessarily that good. The bad ones are 10k per year....the good ones are 20k+ and may be very inconvenient to get to and from seeing how this is New York with all its traffic.
In Boston they are also expensive....but they are at least better academically.
Of course homeschooling is cheapest and best!
These people who send their kids to school generally hire someone to send them off (morning sitter/nanny) and someone to pick the up and drive them around to activities all afternoon.
It's fairly common for people to *pay nannies* to *drive their kids to tutors*!
Post a Comment