School Bond Issue

So this year the school district took a huge budget cut. This caused them to release every reading aide in our school (elementary school). So the teachers have anywhere from 27 to 30 students and they used to have a part-time reading aide to help every morning. Not any more. So in any given classroom you can have a student who gets that 5 x 5 = 25. You ask what is 5 x 5 and Ben will say 25. And then there is the student who cannot wrap their mind around that concept so the teacher teaches that concept for the next 20 to 30 minutes. This drives someone like Ben to "check out."

Then not only do you have this huge range in learning skills, you have a huge range of behavior skills. There are kids who sit still and listen to the teacher, to kids who throw pencils at other kids or talk while the teacher is talking. Some of our teachers are not so sure they want to keep teaching when their pay is really not that significant and their help is being taken away.

Then on top of that you are constantly teaching to the "test." It's just A LOT different than when we went to school and just learned. Apparently the title 9 schools did not lose their aides. To be a title 9 school, your test scores have to be low. Well give us a few years with no aides and we will probably qualify. Just a twisted system.

However if I went to work for the city or the county, I could make 4 times what I am making. An accountant for the county makes about 4000.00 a month. I make about 1000.00 a month. I think what I am doing makes more of a "difference" in life; however I did apply for three or four of those county jobs, but they tend to promote from within. That ratio of pay seems a little out of whack. Why don't our politicians and our county, state, and city workers take a 10% cut in pay and then our school budget wouldn't have to be cut. Just a thought.

So we have a bond issue on the ballot. People hate to see their taxes rise. I get that, but do we just keep turning out kids who can't read, write, or do arithmetic? Parents should be involved in their kids educations more helping them achieve these goals but many families have both parents working and some more than one job just to get by.

I think I could teach Ben better at home. I have always thought this with him. But when he was little, he was a huge mammas boy and needed school to get his social skills up. I fully thought that at fall conferences of his K year I would be told he needed to go somewhere else for school. But it was quite the contrary, he was doing fine. We have a great charter school here as an alternative, but I think I could take him faster and further with home school and that is why I sometimes check it out. Jessica thinks he should do the challenge program for middle school like she did. Joe didn't want to do it and I didn't push him, but he thinks all his classes are easy right now in 6th grade. I suppose there's nothing wrong with that, but I believe he's capable of more.

So that's what has been on my mind for education. Three years ago we were about to build new schools because the oil and gas industry had brought us so many children our schools were busting at the seams. Oil and gas has died down tremendously from our area but we still have the same number of children in Grand Junction. So what to do???????

Dave's birthday went well. He is now 51. We all went to Red Robin on Friday night for his birthday. We had fellowship this morning and listened to Melissa Georges STS DVD. I can't wait to hear Laura's teaching that was done live today. We still haven't received last week's DVD yet so it may be awhile.

Back at it tomorrow. Going to take a small break now. Worked the business all day Saturday and did the shopping, etc. most of the day today. So small break than back at it.