Arizona is in a budget crisis and most public school teachers, administrators and staff seem to be clamouring for an increase in state taxes in hopes of preserving and/or adding to school programs. I've gotten into this scrap on the side of no tax increases and cutting certain school programs to save money.
I can justify in my own mind keeping the basic academic programs and classes, including remedial reading classes, ESL, and even most but not all Special Ed classes, as they do ultimately contribute to a more educated society. There are some so-called Special Ed programs that do not belong in a school. I've worked in them all during my two and a half years as a full-time substitute teacher.
Programs I feel can be cut include sports (sports clubs can fill that interest as they do here and more so in Europe), sex-ed, breakfast and free lunch programs, all-day kindergarten, and there may be certain classes that could be cut that I'm not aware of.
I'd be interested to know how other forum members feel about cutting out certain extra-curricular school activities. What public school programs would you support cutting to avoid tas increases?
Lund, Do the schools only teach Spanish in the ESL program, or any language requested? If we don't teach any and every language that's requested by some imported kid from who knows where, I don't think we shouldn't be teaching Spanish either. So I'm OK with cutting that too. Now I'm not talking about teaching our kids a foreign language mind you... I'm talking about teaching a foreign kid, our language.
They can cut all the funding for sports programs too. They lead to a hand full (relatively speaking) of over paid athletes, and if the networks want to keep that portion of their high income programing going, then they or the NFL, PGA, NBA, (or whoever else might be interested) can pay every penny of the sports programs.
ESL is the teaching of English to people/school kids who come into the class fluent to varying degres usually only their native language. In our area, most students in those classes are native Spanish speakers, although in other areas many come in with Asian, and even a few with European languages. In the classes in which I substituted, I found the teaacher's aid(s) resorted to Spanish quite a bit, although I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work.
Keep in mind that I teach Kindergarten and first grade, so my perspective is focused on early childhood. I may be way off in reference to middle and high school.
I'm in favor of cutting sports, but probably not at the high school level. I'm not sure about other places, but in Texas, high school sports usually bring in more money than they cost. Especially football.
The free and reduced lunch programs are federally funded--no state or local tax monies are used for them. But I'm in favor of getting rid of them anyway--it's the parents' responsibility to feed their kids. It's not the government's responsibility.
I'm in favor of reducing the salaries of administrators. In most places, principals make about twice what teachers are paid. Most district superintendent salaries are in the six figure ranges.
I'm in favor of reducing non-instructional staff. In my urban school district, there are over a hundred employees who work at the district office and have no connection to classroom instruction. We have so many associate and assistant superintendents that their combined compensation packages are well over a million dollars. And each one of them has to have a secretary and other support staff...
I'm in favor of reducing the amount of money we spend on curriculum. With so many resources online and so many classrooms going digital, we waste a whole lot of money replacing books every few years. I write my own lesson plans, using resources from the internet, library, etc. Our district has the scope and sequence for each grade level, plus best practice notes, plus differentiation strategies all on our district web site. In my class, we haven't used the students' books in three years. They're in storage. And yet, the district still will adopt new curriculum next year.
The biggest thing I'm in favor of (and other teachers hate my approach to this) is more charter schools. In Texas, parents can opt to send their child to a state-licensed charter school and use their property tax money (which usually goes to the public schools) to pay for tuition at a charter school. Public schools hate it because they feel like they're being robbed. But let's not forget that it's the parents' money, not the schools'. Parents should have more choices about their kids' education. Plus, competition for student enrollment will only improve education overall--higher quality education, more efficient operations. Shoot, I'd like to see all of public education transition to a market enterprise, supported by corporate grants, scholarships, tuition, etc. As long as the gubment is paying for it, the gubment gets to make the rules, and those rules often don't reflect the values of the communities the schools supposedly serve.
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Lund, I knew ESL stood for "English as a Second Language", I just don't think it should be our problem (or expense) to teach them. Probably a lot of my feelings on this stem from my belief that most of them are either here illegally, or might be technically legal, but only because they were born here to parents who came here illegally (just to create anchors).
