4/3/11
To: The Editor:
As a member of the Common Council, I find “Budget Time” the most difficult time of the year. Producing a budget for our city is more of a daunting task than producing a budget for your family. Why? There are politicians involved who, once they get elected think they’re experts in all fields, many more special interest groups and thousands of folks who want all their problems solved but who want lower taxes to boot!
The Education budget is more difficult to scrutinize. The costs involving in paving streets are much easier to predict than what is needed for teaching students and then assessing disappointing results of teaching efforts. It can be as ridiculous as, did I correctly predict how much asphalt we’ll need vs., how well prepared are our students and their teachers.
All that said, remember, you know immediately if you ordered enough asphalt. Compare that with, how soon do you know if your efforts on behalf of students are working? Difference, it takes years! Everybody I know that is directly involved in education knows all this. They know that the education situation is more complicated and that it depends on how knowledge of teaching and learning is used to effect improvement.
If one takes the small time frame of the past ten years and examines education progress in New Britain, it is not impressive by any measure. On the other hand, if one examines “education” spending in that same time frame, the difference is startling; the beneficiaries are not the students, rather, it has been those delivering the instruction and their supervisors.
Now the following is simplistic: every year, the public is told, “ the largest part of the education budget is employee salaries/benefits.” By only one measure, what do standardized test scores show us? One can say with surety, it shows that simply asking for and spending more money on education every year doesn’t result in improvement. So, what does? Let the public answer that question.
Lou Salvio, Alderman
103 Russwin Rd. New Britain
Monday, April 4, 2011
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4 comments:
Offering school vouchers to allow parents to select which school their child will attend might be one way to lower costs.
The per student cost at public schools is so high, that for each student that attends the much lower cost private schools, the city saves money, of course that is only true if the city follows through and eliminates the teachers and administrators that will no longer be needed as enrollment in the public schools dwindles.
"The per student cost at public schools is so high, that for each student that attends the much lower cost private schools, the city saves money, of course that is only true if the city follows through and eliminates the teachers and administrators that will no longer be needed as enrollment in the public schools dwindles."
One problem with the suggestion above is, all the children from NB attending private schools don't all come from the same school or teacher so, who gets laid off?
It's not as simple as saying, " ... we have 1000 kids attending private schools so, let's lay off 40 teachers."
There are costs to the city - transportation, tuition, etc. - for all the kids attending private magnet schools in other towns (no tuition to NB costs for parochial schools).
If all the private/parochial schools in town closed and their students put into local public schools, I suspect the cost of public schools would increase dramatically.
Is the city willing to pay the private schools the tuition that is charged to private students for the vouchers offered to students? If so, what's the difference? Taxpayers still have to pay!!
Annonymous said: If so, what's the difference? Taxpayers still have to pay!!
THE DIFFERENCE IS WE WOULD PAY A FRACTION OF THE COST FOR A MUCH BETTER EDUCATION!
Public schools cost 10 times more because of the unions, and they routinely score at a fraction of the performance of private schools who must perform in order to attract students while teachers at public schools are guaranteed their pay and benefits no matter how terrible they perform.
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