My 2 cents about Contra Costa Schools
Our Quality of Life
Most school districts in Contra Costa County seem to be suffering tremendous financial short falls. The district that gets the most Press is Mt. Diablo School District. Jobs are being cut, both credentialed teachers and administrators and School hours are being shortened. Property is going without proper maintenance in many cases around the County as well.
Please correct me if I missed something, but have the Unions offered anything to correct the financial situation? I’m sure if I was on a California teachers pension, I would not be writing this blog post.
Our property values, commercial economy, quality of life, infrastructure and pretty much everything else depend on all of us investing in our schools and education.
I hope that all parties continue to work toward the common goal that benefits our communities and not the single interests that play such a large part of our National political climate. These are our families and our neighbors families. let’s keep our eye on the ball and all work toward the good of our communities.
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Sam Benson, 925-262-4299
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Sam
We are facing the same issue in my home town San Carlos. Ditto for Palo Alto and Menlo Park.
We all agree on the importance of education.
As you note, it is the key to our children’s future, it is the key to our nation’s future.
That being said one of the biggest threats to our nation’s future is out of control government spending.
Government organizations have no reason to cut expenses until they are faced with lose of jobs.
In fact, the way the system is set up, government organizations lose money if they do not spend what they have. It is absurd.
Teacher unions like all unions collectively bargain, lobby, persuade, and make campaign contributions in hopes of meximizing their members income and compensation packages. Same for police and fire. Nothing wrong with that at all. Teachers and their unions should work to do this. The problem is their message is often framed in “we want this because it is best for your kids”.
I am sure teacher unions lobbied for a reduction in classroom size several years ago when the state mandated class room sizes of 22 or 23 for K-4. Good idea as long as we can pay for it. I am sure our Sacramento politicians who supported the reduction in classroom size were rewarded with campaign contributions from teacher unions.
I attended public schools in Mt. View, Los Altos, San Francisco, and Queens NY and the average classroom size was 30 – 32 kids. Despite the “handicap” of being forced to attend such large classes, I was able to get a good enough public education to be able to attend nationally ranked universities – Colgate Univ Hamilton, NY for undergrad and Univ of Mich for grad school. I suspect most adults attended class rooms with 30 kids rather than 22. So I ask if 30 was good enough for me and most other adults, why isn’t good enough for our kids?
If you have four classes of 22 and made three classes of 30, teacher expense would drop 25% with in my opinion little drop in teacher effectiveness.
Maybe class room sizes of 22 is a luxury we can not afford.
I suspect that most if not all budget issues in CA school districts would go away if we went back to 30 class room size.
So it is a tough issue and emotions run high. I just think bottom line we can’t spend money we don’t have and we can’t keep borrowing more and more money which our kids and grand kids will pay long after we are gone ands they are out of school.