School Budget

Leah:

Well said, and I agree with most of your points here. Whatever we can do to reduce overhead should be the priority. My parents were school guidance counselors and while we weren't rich, we lived much more comfortably than what Ed and I are able to do for our kids now. Yet with summers off, my dad spent time in military annual training, painting houses, and other odd jobs.

Items 1-6, I am right with you, though since I swam in high school and college, I'm unclear as to whether you'd cut tennis and swimming out as competitive sports entirely.

7. Aides and assistants -- to be fair, things have changed since we were in school. There's unfortunately more problems and less attention at home for many students. That shouldn't be the school's or teacher's responsibility, but it's the reality. There's less respect for teachers -- my cousin teaches fourth grade in the Twin Cities area and had one boy last year she literally had to hold on her lap or he'd run around destroying things all day. He had mental problems but had been "integrated" into her class.

This brings up another issue -- the one of many more special education students taking regular classes. I won't elaborate on this one much because my own autistic teenager is struggling in his regular classes and as parents we're struggling with whether to pull him out. He's not disrupting the classes, he's just -- not all there and is not working up to his potential academically. He's never had a one-on-one aide but there is one shared among a few students with problems in D's classes.

8. Unnecessary classes kids can take in college. Are you talking about AP courses and dual credit classes which, if the student scores well on the test in May, could allow the student to enter college with several freshman courses out of the way, thus saving his or her parents thousands of dollars in tuition or themselves thousands of dollars in future student loan debt?

Speaking again as a parent -- my seventh grade daughter was moved to eighth grade math due to her test scores. Great! Then the math teacher claimed C was not being challenged in her class (this is all foreign to me as I barely scraped by in math during school, had to take a college math course three times before I passed, and probably don't understand it to this day) and recommended C go to the high school to take Algebra. They provided a high school level test, C passed with flying colors and now in fact takes the bus from middle school to high school. At this rate, she will be in geometry in 8th, Trig in 9th and Calculus in 10th. Aside from dual credit or AP math courses, what can she do in school to keep learning in math the last two years? With AP or dual credit classes, she could enter college with some credits already taken care of.

I'm honestly not detailing this to brag. Like I said, for all of C's achievements, we're really struggling with D, and we have a kindergarten son, B, who seems pretty happy and average so far in school, so our children's need, or lack of need, for special classes or programs at school evidently has little to do with our parenting skills or possible lack thereof.

With twice as many kids, each with unique joys, gifts and struggles, I'm sure you can relate.

I worry that taking out too many classroom assistants and eliminating college level classes will create an environment where not all students can learn. No, I don't think the school should have to take on the obligation and expense of creating an individual program for each student. At the same time, I feel 7 and 8 could put us on a slippery slope to eliminating quality of learning items that will affect all students.

Leah,

Saying that our schools are for education and not sports sounds good, but the reality right or wrong is that many parents put a high value on what sports their school offers. I think the community would loose too many students to open enrollment if you went in that direction. An example would be boys tennis. If you cut that sport out you would save around $5,000 but if you lost only 1 player open enrolling at Okoboji it would cost the district $5,700. I know personally of two family's who open enrolled their kids to Spencer when they brought swimming in.

Why has Iowa Lakes Community College added soccer and thinking of adding tennis in these tough economic times? Because their enrollment was going down and sports bring in more students.

I feel putting sports put into the PE curriculum is asking too much of our PE teachers. You need a coach to organize practice, meets, and go on 8-10 bus trips a season to have a competitive team. Unless your talking about going intramural, but if thats the case you have essentially eliminated the sport. Then you could sell the over 20 Lakes Conference championship trophies and half dozen state trophies that the tennis program has got since 1989 an no one would even know that the school had tennis. Except the 1,000 or so kids that went through the program.

Sorry Leah I didn't mean to rant. I agree with your overall point. I just don't like when people single out any one sport as having less value because they're not high profile. Why is swimming less valuable than golf? People need to start realizing that the days of kids competing in school sports for free may be over. One radical solution is "Pay to Play" I'm not sure if it's legal in Iowa but if it isn't they need to change the law. Charge each kid $25.00 to play in non revenue generating sports and it would cover the cost of that sport. If a parent can't afford it let them apply for a waiver.

In order for some classes to be carried over to college, you must 1st talk to the college they plan on going to and make sure they accept them. We did this and kept an open line of communication with each step my son took. He graduated with a BA degree....actually 2 majors and 3 minors---in 3 years and a summer session of 3 months. We saved one semester (plus) in costs due to the AP classes he was able to take in high school. We figured with tuition, room, board, & books we saved over $8000.00. Sorry you had a bad experience, but don't paint it all with the same paint brush because our experience was very positive.