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For Irishbobcat

Started by Towntalk, May 11, 2008, 01:40:21 AM

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Towntalk

I too would like to see more money spent on students with disabilities .

Don't get me wrong ... education ... modern 21st century education is an absolute necessity, and agreed, it is absolutely necessary for teachers to upgrade their own education on a regular basis in our fast moving world where technology rapidly outstrips their ability to keep pace with it. If it's not, then it should be mandatory.

Like others, I believe that teachers should be graded, and that school principals should have the authority to discipline those teachers that are not providing a quality education to their students.

When I was in high school, one of my English teachers absolutely failed to meet the minimum studies, but spent most of his time rapping with the boys about cars letting the girls use the time as a study hall. We had one test that whole year ... on chapter 1 of the text book.
At the end of the year all his students got a C grade.

The next year, our new English teacher ... a really great teacher had to play hardball with all her students just to get us up to speed.

The principal was powerless to punish the male teacher because of the union.

By the way, the high school was Chaney, at the time considered the premier high school in the city.

When I was transfered to Rayen, my grades went from C's to B's in half a year.

irishbobcat

Towntalk:

I couldn't agree with you more either. again, the federal and state government push their problems down to the local levels.

2 examples.

A. President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act and other state education mandated laws that are not funded. Bush's NCLB requiries schools to hire "aides" yet provides no federal funds for these new positions. So who pays for them? The local taxpayer through a new levy or school boards cutting text books, computers, supplies, etc.

B. Ohio Governor Strickland cutting 50 million dollars out of the Ohio Department of Education this year and 49 million dollars next year.
These are tax dollars we have already sent to the state to use and the Governor decided to not use these taxes anymore for education but for other expenses. So who picks up the close to $100 Million in cuts? Again your local school board. These current cuts went to your county Educational Service Center, which provides teachers for students with learning diabilities. Last year, Struthers bill to the county ESC for services was $419,000 dollars. Next year our bill is $539,000. Again, how will we pay for this price increase? Cut staff, cut supplies, ask for another local levy?

The problem is at the federal and state level. It's time we sent a state representative to Columbus to spend time working on these problems instead of attending social parties put on by coal lobbyists, oil companies, and HMO PACS.

Dennis Spisak-Independent Green Party Candidate for State Representative-60th district

campaign site: Http://votespisak.tripod.com


Towntalk

I couldn't agree with you more about wasteful spending at the state level as well as the national level.

At a time when our infrastructure is in serious need of repair where is all the money going?

Again, when our school systems need to be brought into the 21st century, money that should be going into new 21st century textbooks and technology is going into a few new buildings while the students have to use mid - 20th century textbooks and technology.

Before schools started hiring "teacher aides", such as when I was in high school, the schools were turning out quality students, yet today, and this is especially true with inner city schools, the tax payers are not getting the results that they expect for their dollar, and it is being left to colleges to make up for deficiencies before they can move students into college studies.

What really gripes me is the fact that the state unions, whether it's in the school systems, or any other public service ignore the real world needs in preference to protecting protecting their own vested iterests, and then expecting the rest of the people to pick up the tab.

Companies look at the bottom line on their balance sheets, and make the hard decisions based on them, while the public sector folks simply refuse to do the same.

How many times have you seen state, county, and city workers standing around doing absolutely nothing while one or two workers were doing all the work?

Certainly school systems are now starting to cut back to some degree, and certaily cities like Youngstown are starting to cut jobs, yet the costs to taxpayers keeps going up, while their own wages goes down.

It just doesn't add up.

irishbobcat

Towntalk:

As a school board member, I have been pondering it for that past three years. The current system school teachers use is STRS...which wants school boards to increase their share of payment to STRS by 2 1/2 percent for each employee and each employee would have to increase their share also 2 1/2 percent from their wages to support STRS. In Struthers Schools, this additional cost would be over a million dollars to the board of education, which means we would have to lay off staff, cut purchases, or ask the voters for another 6 or 7 mill levy.

As a school board member, we have been very diligent in our spending, that is not the case at the state level. There is vast wasteful spending at state agencies across the state. As a state legistlature, I would see that my job would be to look into reducing wasteful
state spending to shift wasting tax dollars we are already collecting anyway on useless frills and use those tax dollars already in Columbus to shore up such items as pensions or look to recreate a system that is fair for all concerned.

Dennis Spisak