Grumpy voters who defeated more than half of all school levies on the ballot in Ohio earlier this month aren’t going to be happy to learn about the legislature’s latest gimmick to yank school funding and necessitate — yes! — still more levies.
It recently introduced HB 136, which would make vouchers to attend private schools — currently promoted as a lifeline for poor kids in failing school systems — available in all Ohio school districts to families with incomes up to $95,000. The amount of each voucher, ranging from $3,500 to nearly $5,800, would be subtracted from the home district’s state funding.
Adding to the fun: In most cases the voucher would be worth more than the district receives per student — meaning one student could soak up the state funds of multiple students to transfer from, say, Avon High to St. Ignatius.
This article appears in Nov 23-29, 2011.
The government schools cost about $17,000 per student, and they retain the power and authority to tax. So, if they “lose” a student and $5,000, they continue to receive local taxes for that student, but they do not have the expense of
Only government could lose money with that arrangement.
We have an education problem of one kind or another in every school system in the USA. Our biggest problem in my estimation is in the higher education area. We have manufactured fewer thinkers and more money and law freaks than at any time in any cultures history. Over the last thirty years the business schools have taken charge of universities and lawyers have led the way. Only courses which help make a student make more income are considered important in todays higher eductation and high schools. We have become a money based collection of shallow thinking and a distrust for any one who thinks outside of the money-box. Yes, it is the right wing who is mostly responsible for this trend, yet we all bought into the absurd and crazy idea that money was, in fact, all which has value. We have failed miserably in the education of our children and have all but stopped subjects of thinking skills and logic without the aid of computers and calculators.
Do this: Imagine the power is off and we do not have anything other than our thinking skills to make our new environment friendly. How much help will the lawyers and MBAs and bean-counters be? Scientists of all kinds will be helpful and communication professionals will be helpful so long as their skills are not based only in the brave new world’s electronic helps..Farmers and meat cutters and hunters and gatherers and soldiers to protect the civil societies which will be under constant attack by mobs of men taking all which they can. Think of what New Orleans was like for the months after Katrina…When the man made stuff is all underwater, lawyers and other non-esential educations become a burden and of no help unless they can start thinking like we were made to think. Oh yes the social contract and civilization will need to be tought, but not out of law books or business texts.