Money Down the Drain

My local school system is paying the price of mismanaging funds. The have built a new school board building, a new high school, two new elementary schools, two new middle schools, and are in the process of another high school.

They have also wasted money on a fingerprint time clock that they do not use. They are constantly changing curriculum. They also are cutting back all teaching incentives and making teachers pay for their own insurance.

Now, the state of Georgia has made some cutbacks (trying to be fiscally responsible). They have made some cuts in education (2%). My financially struggling county school system, that likes closed door meetings and has been firing teachers and teaching assistants left and right, finds itself having to cut back more.

The funny part is that they are paying a new principal for the new high school they have yet to build. They just hired an assistant curriculum director. They have hired plenty of other board positions.

Who are they going to fire? Teachers. They decided smaller classrooms were not worth saving money elsewhere, so they are going to combine classes and then fire teachers and more teaching assistants.

Here is where running a school is like running a business and unfortunately those running the school do not have any business ability. There are plenty of areas they could have fixed instead of doing what they are doing.

• Why not fire the principal without a job position.
• How about cutting school days back to four days instead of five
  
• Why not stop year long school periods and start school in September when the days are cooler and you do not have to run as much air conditioning
• Why not find better fund sourcing to pay for incentives that keep teachers instead of cutting benefits and chasing teachers away
• Use larger class sizes but put qualified teaching assistants in those rooms
  

I was a school bookkeeper a few years ago. I know where the money is and where it goes. Most of it if funneled back into the board office to help pay for the marble stair case.

I am just a little aggravated because this could affect my wife's job as a teacher. It causes her undue stress because our education system has become a bureaucratic mess.

Voucher programs and scholarships are a beginning, but what really needs to happen is for school systems to be abolished and let private industry come in and make advancements in education.

The money should then follow the student regardless of what type of school they attend.

As long as the federal government keeps a lock on education, our education system will get worse and our students (my kids) will get less from the wasted money used to support our government schools.