re: #14 ObserverArt

I live in one of the supposed top districts in GA. I am STILL pissed off that the quality of my son’s education was pretty much crap after about 7th grade. I do not however blame the teachers. With the exception of maybe 3 in 13 yrs of school, we encountered nothing but professionals who wanted to do the best they could do for the students. I kick myself every day for not moving my son to a different high school in our district that had a vocational program. Gah! I could rant about that forever, I’ll spare you all that one.

What was lacking was within the school board and the administration. I often wondered if any of these people had ever set foot in a classroom after they left their own education. Public schools have been defunded, the standards have been fucked with and lowered, stuff that worked just fine in previous generations (how math is taught for one) was scrapped for bullshit programs that cost a fortune and failed the kids as an “experiment in innovative teaching”. Budget cuts ALWAYS involve teacher salaries, programs in arts, music, or anything outside of STEM, special education after grade 5, and a host of other needed things. Meanwhile, our county is paying the head of the school board over a half million dollar salary which includes a car and housing allowance. We’re on our third superintendent in 5 yrs, the last one before this new hire was “an innovator from Texas” who refused to speak to any parents outside his schmoozing for the job when he was being considered for the job. He’s gone now, and they’ve brought in another “innovator”. I guess I should be glad I don’t have another kid in the system to be experimented on.

They’re breaking the schools so they can say they don’t work. Then they can sell off the infrastructure piece by piece. It’s what happens when people believe that there’s no need for public anything. I wonder how long it will take before the schools in NOLA are deemed an expensive failure and how many kids will be failed in the meantime. The whole thing stinks and it’s SO foolish.