Sacrifice all to make sure we had the best funded school system in the state. (should not be hard in this state.) That would bring all of the better income families back from St. Johns and Clay that tax revenue and influence on our county would solve most of our problems. I love transit, urban infill and more police presence but it is all a waste of time if the children that grow up in your city aren't educated to fill jobs and solve problems. All that population can do is be a burden if it grows up ignored.
This is something that takes leadership. How did our grandmothers create the best public educational system in the world turning out the generation that put us on the moon, bioengineered a 500 percent increase in crop productivity and created the computer/internet revolution?
They did it on approximately half the per student dollars adjusted for inflation that we spend now.
We sabotage our own educational system in so many ways, and the educational system has been under sustained deliberate assault for a generation.
A few free solutions.
Take the politics completely out of our schools. Any activity or group associated with the school should have as a purpose the ideals of education not philosophical recruitment.
No more timewasting on the pernicious religious wars within the school system. Allow the various bible study, koran reciting, moonie chanting and put them under the subject of the humanities. Allow reference materials, disallow active recruiting.
As a trade off, no specific references to anyone's particular denomination in any of the various commencement speeches, or if one is to be included, then a followup of equal time given to every other desirous participant.
Stop allowing the teachers to become the victims of their students.
Return to the gospel of Civic Virtue. Teach the student to become citizens and shut the hell up about their music, clothing and celebrity worship.
Stop being omnidirectional assholes by suspending students for message t shirts (and march every one of the administrators whose lives are so meaningless that they strain over this gnat into a rubber room for observation) while kids are so damned ignorant that they are still getting pregnant at 14.
Get away from the idea that the schools are the parents of the children instead of the instructors.
Get away from the idea that every child is educable. They arent. Or rather, they are, but at such expense and trouble that it would prevent 30 other kids from doing it.
Trade schools, Artisan Apprenticeships and the like have been with us since the beginning of civilization for a reason. Magnet Schools can work for non academically inclined students as well.
Take the internal politics out of the administration.
Area representatives should be required by charter to also be the leaders in community based fund raising.
Our grandmothers didnt have all those damned bake sales for no reason after all.
There werent disney films about the donors to high school sports programs because that was entertaining fiction.
The damned School Board spends most of its time on the collective fat asses of the elected officials, when they should have their useless carcasses out there leading the car washes, Junior Achievement Sales, Arts and Crafts Fundraisers and after school job cooperations with the local companies.
Come on, give me a break.
We can do a hell of a lot better than we presently are, without huge increases in funding, but rather some damned leadership.
It goes without saying that teacher's salaries need raised. They always have, they always will.
But there are just as many over educated, underemployed 20-30 somethings with the same levels of attainments that made our GI grandmother generation of teachers so stellar that they could do the same job.
Of course, the environment would have to be made friendly to them. No screaming matches about creationism, allow a little lattitude for clothing and etc. Maybe the occasional cheap espresso machine in the cafeteria.
The point is, the duval county school board is all sitting around waiting for some 'funding' to be granted on the basis of the most self righteous prognostication, while posturing on the board and occasionally making outbursts about the sad declamatory state of the educational system.
Sanctimony obliges itself to no one.
Also schools have enormous abilities to implement self funding opportunities as well. They used to.
It seems like they just stopped.
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