Waiting For Superman, Still

I took a break to read another book. Now I am back at Waiting for Superman. It is a hard book to sit and read in one sitting. I hope as the book progresses there are some solutions offered. When I was reading on my lunch today there was a paragraph that jumped out at me:

One of the many tragic consequences of failing public schools is that cultural programs and the arts get eliminated or drastically cut back in an effort to save money.

That is what our little grade school is facing. Very timely information. We face a referendum vote on November 2nd. If it fails (and I fear it might), sports will be the first thing to go. There are people that will say, sports is not what school is about. I disagree. There are many things to be learned from athletic competition, some good, some bad. In our junior high, 45% of the students participate in the sports programs. That is a larger number than I expected to hear. Those cuts will save our school $120,000. Does not seem like a huge number. But, the Board needs to find about $500,000 to cut out of a small budget.

After sports are cut all extracurricular activities are up for grabs. Mathletes, band, chorus, all gone. In our junior high school over 90% of the students participate in some type of extracurricular activities. Amazing number.

What will happen to the students if everything is gone? Where will they go after school? The town has ZERO activities to offer kids. We know they do not want them to "hang out" anywhere. They will have to hire extra police to chase away any kids they find hanging out in a group of more than three or four. For some reason, any group larger than that scares people. I think if there is a group of kids hanging out where people can see them, they are easier to keep track of!

Back to my book. Just getting to the part about incentive pay for teachers instead of union contracts. I would like to think good teachers would embrace incentive pay. Let me hear from you teachers.......