The schools don't need another dime, cut teacher's salaries/benefits first and fire 1/3 of all district level admins.

The schools don't need another dime, cut teacher's salaries/benefits first and fire 1/3 of all district level admins.

 

OK I don't know whether there's a glut of district administrators, maybe there is.  But I know a lot of teachers and none of them come close to needing a pay cut.  Few professions offer such low pay in exchange for such rigorous and unending educational requirements.  Yes the benefits are good, but the total package is still so weak it shames our nation. 

 

More teachers should be hired in overcrowded districts.  Class size is critical.  There seems to be a consensus that one bad kid in a room of 15-18 is controllable, but the same bad kid among 30 shuts everything down for everyone.  Instead there's a push to get new fancy projection equipment and new textbooks.  Those are nice but nobody really needs them. 

 

More teachers should be hired in overcrowded districts.  Class size is critical.  There seems to be a consensus that one bad kid in a room of 15-18 is controllable, but the same bad kid among 30 shuts everything down for everyone.  Instead there's a push to get new fancy projection equipment and new textbooks.  Those are nice but nobody really needs them. 

 

Or screens all over the place. Most kids learn all they need about computers because of porn.

'Backdoor' closing on Oak Hills

http://communitypress.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/C2/20090313/VAV02/903130312/

 

Two years ago, the Oak Hills school board adopted what they called a "millage transfer."

 

They simply renamed a portion of their property tax. It meant an unvoted property tax increase on the district's homeowners.

 

Dusty Rhodes is Hamilton County auditor. He lives in Delhi Township.

 

I don't understand what Rhodes' opposition is to this.  I would understand if this truly was a "backdoor" increase, but this swings both ways as Rhodes so eloquently stated in his guest column.  As a result taxpayers saw a benefit to this deal.  If their property values go up then it seems to make sense that the district also benefit from the gains that good school districts often bring to an area.

Dusty has taken this way too personal!   

 

The extremely high reputation and results of this public school district has kept many homes property values within Delhi & Green Twp. from loosing much if any through this recession.  As one of those taxpayers and someone who has campaigned for two levies over the years, I commend Oak Hills for their efforts to keep the district as one of the top performing in the state.     

That is the point, it wasn't right for them to do this without approval of the voters.  I would have gladly paid for the tax increase because I understand the impact a good school system has on property values.

That is the point, it wasn't right for them to do this without approval of the voters.  I would have gladly paid for the tax increase because I understand the impact a good school system has on property values.

 

Would it have been more acceptable to put this particular proposal up to a public vote for approval?  It seems like the opposition is more towards the procedures of this, rather than the practice itself.  Is this a fair judgment to make?

yes, the public should always get to vote on property tax increases.

I agree, but this wasn't a property tax increase as much as it was a property valuation tax increase.  I don't see what's inherently wrong with attaching property taxes to the rise/fall of property values.  Actually, it just seems to make sense.  Please correct me if I am wrong, because I am certainly no expert on the matter.

^^I'd agree with you for the most part Dan except it's education. 

(Personally, I believe if we are able to throw BILLIONS AT WALL STREET, then EVERY school across this country should be taken care of by the govt as well!!!)  anyway, back to reality.  We as a community have to take responsibility for our kids and our neighbors kids too.

 

Sometimes, the public only sees an increase in taxes AND THAT IS IT!  They don't visualize what the benefits would be for their property values or hell, even the kids in their neighborhood. 

 

Three Rivers School District has been trying to build new schools by trying to pass levies for the better part of a decade now.  Every time, they fail!! 

Many residents within that district (similar to Oak Hills) send their kids to Catholic schools.  Others have half million dollar homes and don't want to see their taxes increase by several thousand dollars a year. (Another example of not living within their means.)   

 

One thing that Green Twp. residents of Oak Hills can enjoy is one of the LOWEST TAX rates in Ham. Cty.  I pay roughly $1100 a year on an $85K house.  I'd venture to bet 700-800 of that goes to the schools.    Now, for those people who feel they need 3500sf or more and a 4-500K mortgage.........well they are probably pushing 6-7k on taxes and along with that.... a definite NO VOTE on ANY NEW TAX LEVY PROPOSED regardless if the schools actually needs it or not.   

 

People's ignorant decisions, lifestyles, beliefs, etc. tend to cloud their judgement come election time!      The school districts and ultimately the kids suffer as a result.

 

As Randy says, the taxes rise and fall with property values so what's unfair about that?    I still believe Dusty is just bitter for personal reasons!

 

 

Just because someone has a home that you deem too large, and doesn't want their taxes to go up, does not mean they are living above their means.  That is an attitude I find pervasive on UO, that others can decide how you should live.

 

I too sent my children to Catholic school, but I live in Oak Hills SD.  I understand the value of good public schools.

To each is their own!      Their are alot of people who have that "Keeping up with the Jones!" mentality in this area.    (I'm not saying you do Dan, but it does exist in large numbers over here.)

 

I could afford to get a 250K house yet I choose not too, for personal reasons.

 

 

"That is an attitude I find pervasive on UO, that others can decide how you should live."

 

It's not just people on UO!

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,18716.0.html

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/03/18/rich.getting.food.stamps.wlwt

And if that is fine for you, than GOOD for you.

 

But you didn't say "those you try to keep up with the Joneses", you said people who don't want their taxes raised.  I don't want my taxes raised, and I don't think that is a bad way to feel, especially when I don't particularly like the way my taxes are spent.

Not sure if there's somewhere better than this, but I am completely shocked an appalled. 

 

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09313/1011971-53.stm 

 

Pittsburgh's mayor says he'll pursue 1 percent higher-ed tax

Moves to bridge gap in city pension fund; challenge expected

Monday, November 09, 2009

By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl plans to propose a 1 percent college-education privilege tax to council today, in a move that's likely to set off a fight with the city's schools of higher learning.

 

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09313/1011971-53.stm#ixzz0WNHahmQI

 

A tax to students for the PRIVILEGE of being educated in Pittsburgh?  Are you kidding me?  This seems like a horrible, horrible idea to me.  Not the type of people/institutions you want to tax and get on your bad side - even if they are freeloaders. 

 

Could be a boon for those recruiters at CWRU, though  :wink:

 

Ohio urged to reduce school districts

Close 1 in 3, study says

By Jon Craig and Lisa D. Preston • [email protected] • February 22, 2010

 

COLUMBUS - Ohio should merge or close at least one-third of its 613 public school districts to reduce duplication and redirect the savings toward instruction, according to an economic study released today.

 

A study by the Greater Ohio Policy Center and the Brookings Institution harshly criticized Ohio for failing to address what it described as a costly, top-heavy public school system. While parents, principals and superintendents are highly protective of neighborhood schools, the study recommended consolidating to cut administrative costs and reduce duplication.

 

 

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20100222/NEWS0102/2220341/Ohio+urged+to+reduce+school+districts

Not so different that what we already did once (and I'm sure there was resistance back then, too).  I question whether duplication would actually be reduced, though, or whether basically every single administrator plausibly rendered redundant would simply slide into a new role created at the new centralized HQ for a given district.

It sounds real good on paper.  But there will be some very upset parents if it goes through.  Combining districts would not only involve combining resources and supposedly saving some money, but it would necessarily involve combining some undesirable school districts with desirable districts.  How do you think it woudl play out if Wickliffe and Euclid were combined for example?  What about SE-L with Beachwood?  EC with CH and SH?

There would be some upset parents, but unless the district also adopted a policy of forced integrated busing, which would certainly not be necessary, the students in those districts would probably not see a whole lot of change.  A few students that might be physically closer to one school or the other might get reassigned, but there would probably not be wholesale blending.

 

And, of course, under the privatization & voucher system I would really like to see, there would be no territorially-bound "districts" at all, so the boundaries between EC, CH, etc. would be meaningless for the purposes of sending children to school.

I think it would be more dramatic than that.  Take South Euclid - Lyndhurst school district for instance.  They wanted to save money, so they closed 3 of the 6 elementary schools.  The students from three that closed were consolidated into the other schools.  The poverty level for one of those schools jumped from below 5% to nearly half due to the specific neighborhood near the Cleveland border (lots of Section 8 ) that was consolidated.  I am sure we would see quite a bit of that if districts started consolidating.  There are serious savings that can be achieved when the district has to heat, cool and maintain less facilities, enlarge the classroom size to the max allowable under state law and employ less teachers.

Anybody know of any short and concise publication on how a voucher system works in practice?  Are there any examples of such a system being implemented in other states/districts?

i don't there that there would necessarily need to be a consolidation of school buildings. For example, in Ohio counties, there are x number of Local School Systems and City School Districts, each with the own BOE, Admins, Superintendent etc. Why could there not be a county level consolidation of the administration, BOE, and Supers, while allowing the individuals school buildings to remain. That alone would go a long way to helping to reduce the top-level expenses. Groups excepted from this consolidation might be schools with greater than 8,000 or 10,000 students enrolled that are city schools currently.

 

I'm not saying that there aren't problems, but I definitely think there are opportunities for cost reduction.

School of choice should also be allowed when it comes to public schools. If a parent or student is willing to make the commute and if there is room, I think a child should be allowed to any school of their or their parents choice. Children should not be punished for the fact that their families cannot afford to live in a community with a successful school district. That said, I think a school of choice student should be mandated to maintain a certain GPA and/or be required to be involved in some sort of extra-curricular activity in order to remain eligible.

 

This is basically where I come down, too, though I don't think that any GPA or extracurricular involvement requirements should be imposed by the government.  I think schools should be perfectly free to impose them on their own, though.

This proposal is fraught with peril. I support the concept, but closing schools and districts will be very difficult politically and emotionally. I haven't read the Brookings/Greater Ohio proposal yet (I'm going to the Columbus Metropolitan Club forum onthe topic on Wednesday), but I assume they're figuring on savings not just from administrative costs, but also operating costs in existing school buildings. There can be hidden costs of closing schools, however, Schools often are a focal point of a community, and the loss of a school can be a death knell for a community -- decline of local businesses, property values, etc. Any major consolidation should try to keep community schools open while achieving administrative cost savings.

Countywide school systems is the only way to make this remotely equitable. I probably would go ahead and dismantle the entire public school bureaucracy as an independent agency and make schools an explicit part of county gov't with county executive elected officials responsible for the schools in the area. I'd strengthen the home rule of cities with expanded annexation powers.

This proposal is fraught with peril. I support the concept, but closing schools and districts will be very difficult politically and emotionally. I haven't read the Brookings/Greater Ohio proposal yet (I'm going to the Columbus Metropolitan Club forum onthe topic on Wednesday), but I assume they're figuring on savings not just from administrative costs, but also operating costs in existing school buildings. There can be hidden costs of closing schools, however, Schools often are a focal point of a community, and the loss of a school can be a death knell for a community -- decline of local businesses, property values, etc. Any major consolidation should try to keep community schools open while achieving administrative cost savings.

 

I agree. Any gains we would make in terms of equalizing opportunity and leveling the playing field for urban centers by taking away the "school advantage" would be negated if we closed schools that serve as anchors to their communities. I grew up in a suburb with no sense of place, a bedroom community off of a highway exit. The school district and the academic, athletic, and cultural amentities it provided was the only thing that ever bounded the community together with any sort of identity. If a school can do that for a traditional sprawl community, I would have to imagine the benefits to a small neighborhood in the sea of the big city would be even greater.

 

The problem here is how do you distinguish the schools that would be lost in consolidation from those that were likely to be on the chopping block without consolidation?  Many urban districts are closing schools already.

Consolidation and demolition.  Two words I hate to hear when talking about schools.  We should be building schools, not tearing them down.  We should have a goal of smaller classrooms, not larger ones.

 

This problem certainly is not limited to Ohio.  It is a national epidemic, especially in urban areas.

 

I would love for my son to go to his neighborhood elementary school, but he won't and my retirement will consequently be delayed :(.  It's not a safety issue for me.  It is an overcrowding issue.  I will suck up the cost of private school to get the teacher-student ratio down to 10 or below and to make sure he is surrounded by kids who have parents that similarly place such a high value on education.  At his public school, his Kindergarten class would be 1:20!  Seriously, how can one teacher effectively instruct twenty 5 year olds? 

 

Ohio is supposedly addressing the issue and will mandate that class sizes be no bigger than 1:15 by 2014, but my son starts in 2011 and I know how crucial those first few years can be.  I would gladly have a massive tax increase to avoid the monumental costs of a decent private school, but I highly doubt anything substantial would pass by a vote of "the people".  So, I am just going to have to suck it up for now.  Honestly, I really don't have any choice in the matter since the "Higher Authority" is pretty firm in her stance.  As you can see, he's mommy's little ham....

 

I hate to hear the "demolition" word, too.  I don't think that consolidation necessarily implies demolition, though.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  The issue that I raised earlier is basically the anticipation of a post hoc argument: in other words, if two school districts with 10 schools each consolidate, and then two schools are closed, lowering the total to 18, can you say for certain that those two schools would still be open had consolidation never occurred?

 

One reason that I'm so enthusiastic about the prospect of a larger private sector involvement in education is that I don't see the public schools reclaiming a lot of these buildings.  I'd like to at least give private schools a chance at replacing some folding public schools.  If neither a private nor public school wants a given building, then maybe it's beyond repair.  A private school at least might be able to succeed where a public school failed, since their costs are often lower and they can recruit from farther afield than public schools, unconstrained by jurisdictional boundaries.

NC uses county schools with some decent success, but their relatively "newer" cities don't have as much decay from within either so the disparity is not as great.  In fact, the schools might get worse the farther you get away from the City center.

 

I did not say that consilidation would "automatically" equate to demolition.  Minimum student-teacher levels will not allow consolidation in most cases without expanding the building being consolidated into.  But... when it CAN be done, it most likely will be done.

 

Look, we can't pay our teachers any less than we already do.  We already (hopefully) run a tight budget on textbooks and other supplies.  And more and more districts are sadly going with a "pay to play" for athletics.  No matter what system we go with, whether it be refining the current system, giving vouchers, or charter schools, the schools themselves need more $$$$$$$ and a lot more than getting rid of a few administrators will give them.

 

Better parent involvement/interest would help, but if that is the solution, we will be waiting a long time to get this thing fixed.

Look, we can't pay our teachers any less than we already do.

 

The private school experience strongly suggests otherwise.  Obviously there are also structural differences, but the public schools also have room to adapt some of those structures and neutralize the advantages of private schools in this regard.

Any kind of serious consolidation would mostly affect the smaller inner-ring districts, who would likely be forced to join the big-city district or combine with a couple of other nearby districts.

I think everyone here is having a hard time separating administrative consolidation like I proposed above:

 

i don't there that there would necessarily need to be a consolidation of school buildings. For example, in Ohio counties, there are x number of Local School Systems and City School Districts, each with the own BOE, Admins, Superintendent etc. Why could there not be a county level consolidation of the administration, BOE, and Supers, while allowing the individuals school buildings to remain. That alone would go a long way to helping to reduce the top-level expenses. Groups excepted from this consolidation might be schools with greater than 8,000 or 10,000 students enrolled that are city schools currently.

 

I'm not saying that there aren't problems, but I definitely think there are opportunities for cost reduction.

 

And building consolidation. I don't think the Greater Ohio Policy Center was advocating for building consolidations, but rather admin consolidation.

 

By consolidating school districts to the county level, it would remove redundant administrators and leave more money to be spent per pupil. Schools could higher more teachers, restructure, have lower teacher:student ratios. At the same time, the high schools (which have the most loyalty due to sports teams) could remain separate as they are today.

I am all for administrative consolidation, but I fear that and that alone would be like feeding a tic-tac to a whale.  The schools would still lack anywhere near ideal funding.

Consolidation and demolition. Two words I hate to hear when talking about schools. We should be building schools, not tearing them down. We should have a goal of smaller classrooms, not larger ones.

 

This problem certainly is not limited to Ohio. It is a national epidemic, especially in urban areas.

School consolidation always reminds me of the great Wendell Berry and his explanation of school consolidation and busing as a tool of community disintegration. He focuses on the effects of consolidation in rural areas but his observations apply to urban areas just as much.

 

more: http://books.google.com/books?id=hNwHN3mQmWoC&lpg=PA62&ots=cVbGpiI8C8&dq=wendell%20berry%20school%20consolidation&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q=consolidation&f=false

 

Demolition is awful especially when they are beautiful, high quality, historic buildings.  Is it any wonder that many of the best performing schools (esp in urban areas) are in older buildings?

 

Dayton Public passed a couple levies and is now building a bunch of new schools.  This is both a boon and a boondoggle.  Many of the older schools are just being mothballed or demoed and the new schools are soul-crushing to observe.  They are improvements in many cases however.

 

Sometimes I think ratios of 1:10 are too small but that's just me.

I generally agree, but I think Ohio simply can't afford our current system and it makes the racial segregation of most of the large cities much worse. If we went all the way to county schools, I think that the local school communities should be given greater control over the individual schools. Vouchers is still the best answer.

Dayton Public passed a couple levies and is now building a bunch of new schools. This is both a boon and a boondoggle. Many of the older schools are just being mothballed or demoed and the new schools are soul-crushing to observe. They are improvements in many cases however.

 

Sometimes I think ratios of 1:10 are too small but that's just me.

 

The state of Ohio has a wonderful formula that says if rehabbing a school building costs more than x% of the cost to build new, then you have to build new if you want funding from the state.  That's probably what is happening here.

 

Particularly in the lower grades (kindergarten through second grade), a lower student-teacher ratio is a must.  Younger kids just cannot sit still that long and have very short attention spans.  That means they need extra attention to keep them in their seats and continually reminded to focus on tasks.  In some classes that is tough for one teacher to do with ten kids, much less 15 or 20.  Try coaching five-year-olds sometime.  I couldn't.

 

The things I looked for in a school for my kids included small class sizes and parent involvement in the school and their kids' education.  As a result, I often see other parents at the school and know most of the parents of my kids' classmates very well.  This makes for a community working together, rather than relying on the school to take care of it for us.

 

I also prefer a small school.  Even if I don't have kids in third grade, all the third-grade teachers know who my kid is.  Everyone keeps an eye on everyone.  If you have small classes in a large school, only the teachers that actually have your kid in class would know who each kid is.  I think kids can get away with more in that environment (and if they can, they will).  Quality schools means higher property values, so even if I didn't have kids in school I would want smaller classes and smaller schools, even if it meant less "efficiency."  I'm willing to pay higher taxes to get quality rather than lowest cost.

 

I hope we don't get so carried away with "efficiency" that we forget we're not making widgets, we're building citizens.  Citizens who will be paying the taxes that support society (roadways, fire, police, courts, etc.) and caring for us once we're retired and elderly. 

Actually, the state's formula for building new vs. rehabbing old is horrible. It's very heavily biased against renovations -- it doesn't factor in mitigation or demolition costs of old buildings, and it makes unreasonable requirements for renovations. Fortunately, Columbus and a few smaller districts fought this and have been able to save and renovate some fine old buildings. But most cities threw out sturdy old buildings for cheap new ones. It's been a devastating state policy.

 

It does not factor into this report. Greater Ohio was one of the strongest voices against the current demolish-and-build-new policy.

Legislators won't go for that. Their consitutents are already struggling with low property values.

 

I would absolutely support it though.

Legislators won't go for that. Their consitutents are already struggling with low property values.

 

I would absolutely support it though.

 

That is exactly what will happen and people will complain when the state, instead, raises taxes and drastically reduces funding all the while the public will still be bantering about " a lack of fiscal responsibility". Times are changing in every aspect of America. Many of the old ways are proving to be not in touch with reality or were insustainable to begin with. 600+ school districts in a State the size of Ohio is ridiculous. Frankly, the desired of 400 is still high.

 

District reduction along with vouchers, school of choice, and a county-controlled administration (incorporated communities excluded) are the answers.

 

Agreed.

 

 

 

The number of municipalities is ridiculous, too. I believe we have the second largest number of municipalities in all 50 states. I don't buy the "sense of community" excuse either, at least not in these cases. This is where Ohioans get a little too conservative for their own good.

Dayton Public passed a couple levies and is now building a bunch of new schools.  This is both a boon and a boondoggle.  Many of the older schools are just being mothballed or demoed and the new schools are soul-crushing to observe.  They are improvements in many cases however.

 

Sometimes I think ratios of 1:10 are too small but that's just me.

 

Particularly in the lower grades (kindergarten through second grade), a lower student-teacher ratio is a must.  Younger kids just cannot sit still that long and have very short attention spans.  That means they need extra attention to keep them in their seats and continually reminded to focus on tasks.  In some classes that is tough for one teacher to do with ten kids, much less 15 or 20.  Try coaching five-year-olds sometime.  I couldn't.

 

 

This is a cherished American myth that gets repeated often among professional educators. Our teacher-centered pedagogies make smaller classes necessary. Other countries, like Japan, mandate 35 students per class from first grade, and 40 in junior high school. Even nursery schools will have 25-30 students per teacher.

 

Im not sure it would work well in the US, since we demand so much 'control' over our children as a culture, but perhaps if we lightened up a bit and trained teachers in different ways, we could move away from such small classes and invest the money in children with special needs and other kinds of enrichment.

I'm mixed on the amounts of gov't we have. I think local control is very important to keeping communities responsive, subsidiarity and all that.

 

I'd say, police, fire, and education should be countywide in Ohio on a funding basis. However, I'd probably do some variation of the way certain counties use the sheriffs in the townships (centralized management with some modicum of local control). Each municipality and townships would be allocated police and fire by the county to roughly do with as they please.

 

Education would follow a similar model.

If that model takes the power of taxing themselves out of the hands of the local portion of the county district I just don't see it happening.  I went to Aurora City Schools in Portage County and having to try and get the rest of the county to get on board for a tax increase (for anything, not just education) would be a disaster.  The expectations of service gap is enormous in this particular case.  So any push to get Aurora to join in with the county would be met by "town hall meeting/tea party" levels of resistance.

 

It would be measurably easier to try and merge Aurora into some kind of Solon, Aurora, Bainbridge-Auburn, Twinsburg district.  Which I'd emphasize would be a 4 county district that would cover over 100 square miles (which is approximately the magic number to hit to achieve the 400 district goal).  It would still require the state to bring the shotgun to the wedding but it could happen in my mind.

 

This is just my example I'm sure it plays out a hundred times over when looking around the state.

School consolidation always reminds me of the great Wendell Berry and his explanation of school consolidation and busing as a tool of community disintegration. He focuses on the effects of consolidation in rural areas but his observations apply to urban areas just as much.

 

Jesse Stuart was a Kentucky local color writer a generation before Berry.  He was an agrarian in spirit (actually a student of the Vanderbilt Agrarians), but he was also a teacher and educator.  Unlike Berry Stuart supported school consolidation as a way to improve education in rural Kentucky (Stuart started out teaching in one-room schools).

 

As much as I like Berrys fiction I am finding him more and more reactionary and moralistic about rustic virtue.  He has little to say about urban life.  Little postive, that is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That Brookings report has some gee-whiz numbers, and not just about schools.

 

Ohio has the ninth highest local government tax burden in the US and 34th highest state tax burden. This seems pretty high.  Big Government appears to be only an issue if it's the Feds.  If its local, tax away! 

 

 

 

 

School consolidation always reminds me of the great Wendell Berry and his explanation of school consolidation and busing as a tool of community disintegration. He focuses on the effects of consolidation in rural areas but his observations apply to urban areas just as much.

 

Jesse Stuart was a Kentucky local color writer a generation before Berry. He was an agrarian in spirit (actually a student of the Vanderbilt Agrarians), but he was also a teacher and educator. Unlike Berry Stuart supported school consolidation as a way to improve education in rural Kentucky (Stuart started out teaching in one-room schools).

 

As much as I like Berrys fiction I am finding him more and more reactionary and moralistic about rustic virtue. He has little to say about urban life. Little postive, that is.

I'll have to look into Stuart some more. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Wendell Berry has to be seen for what he is: an agrarian.  If you can translate his agrarian ideas to urban areas, then his "Idea of a Local Economy" and many of his other essays construct a cogent argument for reinvigorated and powerful urbanism.

 

Here are some reviews of his book "The Way of Ignorance"

 

"Read him with pencil in hand, make notes, and hope that somehow our country and the world will soon come to see the truth that is told." -New York Times book review 

 

"Berry continues to offer a compelling vision of the good and the true life" Boston Globe

 

"Here is a human being speaking with calm and sanity out of the wilderness. We would do well to hear him." Washington Post Book World

 

That Brookings report has some gee-whiz numbers, and not just about schools.

 

Ohio has the ninth highest local government tax burden in the US and 34th highest state tax burden. This seems pretty high. Big Government appears to be only an issue if it's the Feds. If its local, tax away!

While I think you're being sarcastic, there actually is some truth to this.  The "first tier suburbs" idea of coping with a dying urban core might prove to be nothing more than symbolic gestures of cooperation.  What, after all, do Trotwood and Oakwood have in common besides their peripheral proximity to downtown Dayton?  I think the forced integration busing forever scared Daytonians away from the countywide school district idea.

 

Is there any evidence that consolidated rural schools benefited anyone in the community?  Other than (supposedly) cutting down the bottom-line expenses for the state, what did they accomplish?

The teachers and parents of small children in my family have been talking up this article on Facebook.  It regards No Child Left Behind.

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124209100&sc=fb&cc=fp

Other than (supposedly) cutting down the bottom-line expenses for the state, what did they accomplish?

 

Consolidated county high schools could have more course offerings, and consolidated elemetary schools meant you could have graded instructon vs all the grades in a one-room school. 

 

I guess what they ended up with in Kentucky was countywide school districts, or a county district for the rural areas and a city district for the county seat, if the county seat was large enough.  In places like Northern KY and Ashland they followed the Ohio pattern of smaller districts.

What can we do to fix education in Ohio?  Some ideas/areas for improvement:

 

-Fixing the State Funding Scheme.  How can it be done?  What do other states do?  I know this is a problem, but admittedly, I don't know a great deal about the details of it.

 

-Improving School Choice.  As of now, a family's local public school options are limited by geography.  Certain zip codes are deemed more desirable simply because they allow access to "better" schools.  Can we move away from such a system where geography ties a family down to a certain school?

 

-School/District Consolidation.  Our state has far too many school districts.  Since I know this area well, Cuyahoga County has something like 33 school districts, some very tiny and seemingly unnecessary.

 

-Segregation by Class and Race.  Despite "separate but equal" being declared unconstitutional several decades ago, schools/districts in Ohio have still managed to become very segregated based on self-selection.  This may be more of a symptom of some of the above problems.

 

These are just a few ideas and problems that I feel need to be addressed.  What are your thoughts on problems and solutions dealing with PK-12 education?

Neighborhood schools, walkable communities, more choices for parents, more local control and fewer mandates.  I think entire districts should be broken down into areas maybe 2-3 sq miles depending on density.

I say go radical.

 

 

1. It all comes down to jobs.  How you get those...well, that's for another topic.  But more jobs equals fewer crimes equals better neighborhoods equals people not wanting to move equals staying in school.

 

2. Legalize all drugs; therefore, some of these daddies will no longer be in prison for dealing and possessing and instead can stay around and actually be parents. 

 

3. Incorporate broken windows type legislation.  Severely punish people for small infractions and they won't get around to doing big ones.

 

4. Mandatory high school diplomas.  You have to get a diploma or else you get punished in some way.  Not sure how, but again, that's another topic.  A

 

5. Teacher re-certification every few years.  Teachers no longer get to hide in tenure or seniority.  Doctors and lawyers have to get retested or re-licensed every few years.  So should teachers.  And if they fail (say 2 or three times), then they're OUT!

 

6. Permit expulsions from all school districts.  Bad kids should be kicked out if they continue to be bad.  Not transferred to other schools.  Completely removed.  What we do with them, again, is for another topic.

 

7. Pay kids to succeed.  Since a lot of these kids don't care about bettering themselves for the sake being educated, then let's bribe them.  You get an A, you get $25.  Something like that.

 

8. Privatize schools.  We spend a lot of money on kids to go to schools, and it's gotten us nothing.  Charter schools do better usually.  Therefore, let's refocus our public funds on those kinds of places.

 

9. Incorporate trade schools and apprenticeships in school.  Let them learn a trade and get hands on experience.  It seems win win.

 

10. Schools should be year round and longer hours.  Pay teachers more if you have to and cut those excess administrators if need be.  Get these kids out of the streets and into the classroom.

 

11. Criminalize gangs.  Treat gangs as you would terrorist sect.  We need to stop accepting gang life as cultural and instead treat it and its members as you would if they were Al Queada.  And based on the number of people who have died due to American gangware, I'd say they're a lot worse.