[08grad]

Originally Posted by Katie the heartbreaker

This is a tax that will hit me directly, yet I am 100% for it. The last time sales tax went up, it was to help with the police compensation and pensions. It went from 8.15% to 8.25%. I remember keeping track of how much it was costing me. It was around 5 pennies a month. Yes, 5 pennies a month. If this one goes through, and I hope it does, it will end up hitting me for around the same. I can spare another 5 pennies to help the schools.

Why wait for a tax increase? The government and school district both take donations.

[boatpi]

No way, just a smoke and mirrors scam like CA has done for years. "Its for the children" in all CA tax increase ads. I am not against a specific tax targeted increase, like for Metro 2 years ago. First off, they are making millions on MJ tax, where is it, the accounting? Something is wrong.

BTW: if it is not, all sales tax should have voter approval, just not sure of law in NV??


Look what those dopes who live in LA County did a year ago, sales tax increases for homeless, etc., but if you read the bill almost half goes to pet projects. A scam.

LA county sales tax, now 10.25%, highest in country. Do you want to head in that direction?

Now thousands of LA County residents drive across the border to Orange County Costco to make large purchases, sales tax is 7.75%.

[WVREDLEG]

Originally Posted by bthp223

What the hell happened to all this Marijuana tax money that was supposed to help out. Last I heard it was in the rainy day fund ?

What say you?

Where is that marijuana tax going?


Said it. Didn't seem to generate much interest a few weeks ago.

[FML157]

My niece is in 4th grade in a middle class area (centennial hills). Her class size is 32. Her teacher deserves a medal; no idea how you can effectively teach a group of 32 kids.

I don't know what the solution is, but it's frustrating to see that type of class size.

[RationalExpectations]

Originally Posted by WestieJeff

Education funding in NV is horrifically low, one of the lowest in the country. And it's well known we have a horrifically poor education system, one of the worst in the country.

I don't disagree with anything you say. Still, let's do a thought experiment. Let's say we give an incremental $500 per child to the school system. How might that improve educational outcomes? I don't see a direct connection.

Over in the Arizona forum, there is a somewhat similar thread regarding K-12 education funding:

Originally Posted by Burning Madolf

It's trickle down government bureaucracy. Little example: during the Red for Ed campaign there was a poster here who claimed to be a para-professional in the Dysart School District. Very passionate person and adamant that teachers and support staff on the ground weren't paid enough and classrooms were desperate for more money.

Fast forward to what the district did when they got there hands on more money in the last year or so: they hired 3 or 4 social workers and filled an obscure directorship that had been left vacant for over 10 years (since the Bubble popped). Talk about non-essential.

Government education spending is a huge funnel with a flood of funds being poured in the large opening and the students at the little opening sopping up the trickle, just under the teachers. What happens in between is just like any other wasteful government entity.

**************

Sadly, it seems to me the above quote can describe most every larger school district.

I do believe taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society, and I'm actually proud to pay my share. At the same time, I just don't see any reasonable connection between:

(a) giving our schools more money and
(b) better educational outcomes.

Classroom teachers not only here but across the nation report they do far too much babysitting which leaves much less time for instruction, and that recalcitrant students are can never disciplined and run roughshod over teachers in the classroom.

Contrast that with yet another poster in a different sub-forum on C-D:

Originally Posted by Hal Roach

I am a regular viewer of the Singapore news, living where I do. Singapore is always near the top on student achievement, so of course it is often referred to by the educrats..but what they don't mention is that they don't take flak from teachers. Do a good job, or leave. They even started charging them to park, just like everyone else, who refuses to use the multi billion dollar transit systems in congested areas. Illegal immigrants? Three strokes of the cane, 60 days in jail, deportation for illegally entering Singapore. Oh, and they just destroyed all the books about the gay penguin parents..likely has already been promoted to your kids, and in fact homosexuality is a crime. There are no teachers with Fred Flintstone haircuts indoctrinating their students. What percentage of Arizona students can tell you what STEM stands for?

And elsewhere here in the LV forum, the following from an actual classroom teacher:

Originally Posted by 08grad

Please don't buy into the current talking points that all our schools need is more funding and the problems will be fixed.

More funding won't put an end to the practice of social promotion instead of academic promotion.

More funding won't bring back discipline to the classroom and allow teachers to remove disruptive students.

More funding won't change how parents view school as free daycare instead of a place to learn useful life skills.

Our current funding levels are so awful that we would need to at least double our budgets to have any sort of meaningful impact.

We haven't had new curriculum in 15 years. Our computers still have Windows XP.

Our class sizes average 40 students. There are no supplies for the students who don't bring their own.

Any funding proposal would be the equivalent of using duct tape to fix a leaking pipe. Not only that, the funds will disproportionately be allocated to the neediest students that we already spend far too much of our resources on.

And

Originally Posted by 08grad

Add me to that list. I'm actively looking to do something else that allows me to keep my pension that isn't teaching.

Admin makes it impossible for teachers to remove disruptive students from the classroom. I have to go through a 5 step process including parent contact before I can do something as routine as write a Dean's Office referral for a disruptive student.

This year I have been reprimanded for calling a student's household for a student who hasn't done their homework and asking them to make sure their student completes it over the weekend.

Another student filed a bullying complaint form on me because my class was too hard for them. This was for the highest level math class at the school.

2 of my classes don't have a single student at grade level in mathematics. These classes are stocked with 42 and 43 students, and I keep getting students added to my roster fresh out of the behavioral schools.

And

Originally Posted by 08grad

You want to throw more money at people who don't care at all about their education? Kansas City tried this already. They burned through $2 billion ($40,000/student), increasing teacher salaries to attract the best teachers, building all new schools with the best facilities in the nation. And test scores didn't change one bit.

Our legislature already tried to entice teachers to move to low performing schools. AB 434 allocated $2.5 million in bonus money for teachers to transfer from non-Title I schools to Title I schools. Why didn't it work? Well first off, less than 20% of our schools are non-Title I. Even if we took all the teachers from the top performing schools and sent them to our Title I schools, we wouldn't even fix half of the problem. In addition, most who teach at those highly rated schools aren't effective teachers, as student test scores show little growth year-over-year.

In addition, the bonus was a whopping $5,000. That's not going to entice anyone to move from West Tech to Cheyenne HS. This is exactly the problem. The problems in education are so gargantuan that we would need to almost double our funding to have any meaningful impact. When I hear Sisolak promising to "fund our schools" on TV, I don't think he has any clue how bad it actually is, he's just trying to score political points like Trump was when he was promising to deport the illegal immigrants.

To fix education, you need to look at what schools who are out-performing their demographics are doing. Places like Hyde Park MS, who match wealthier suburbs even though they have 3x as many free/reduced lunch price recipients. They're not doing well because they have better teachers instructing their bottom half of the school who is only there because it's free and they're required to be there. They do well because they offer high level accelerated programs that effectively educate the brightest in the school, and separating these students from those who don't care.

When families of neighboring schools hear that "Hyde Park has a great accelerated program", then all of the sudden the involved parents start putting in requests to enroll their child there instead of their neighboring school, and you start getting more proficient students to enroll. This is the same model we used in California to bring our school up from the 24th percentile to the 51st percentile. We continued to offer middle school Geometry when every other school was getting rid of it in favor of Common Core. When parents heard of our accelerated program, our transfer requests went up.

You have to fix the top of these schools before you can do anything about the bottom half that treats education as free daycare.

[RationalExpectations]

The following hypothetical is something for which I would vote YES:

Shall we increase classroom teacher compensation by 10% where it is solely funded by a reduction in the number of administrative employees (not number of administrative spots) and compensation for each administrative employee who is not let go?

[tijlover]

[quote=boatpi;56012372]No way, just a smoke and mirrors scam like CA has done for years. "Its for the children" in all CA tax increase ads. I am not against a specific tax targeted increase, like for Metro 2 years ago. First off, they are making millions on MJ tax, where is it, the accounting? Something is wrong.

BTW: if it is not, all sales tax should have voter approval, just not sure of law in NV??


Look what those dopes who live in LA County did a year ago, sales tax increases for homeless, etc., but if you read the bill almost half goes to pet projects. A scam.

LA county sales tax, now 10.25%, highest in country. Do you want to head in that direction?

Now thousands of LA County residents drive across the border to Orange County Costco to make large purchases, sales tax is 7.75%.[/QUOTE

.50% of LA's Sales tax goes for light rail/subway. That .50% additional sales tax had to be approved by 2/3rds of the voters, and it passed with 68% approval rate.

[boatpi]

Well in a general sense, look at Orange County schools compared to LA County. Look at the very least sales tax huge numbers. Like Ron White said, "You cannot fix stupid"

[ND_Irish]

Originally Posted by 08grad

Why wait for a tax increase? The government and school district both take donations.

Good point, 08grad! Here is a link to the Public Education Foundation for those who wish to give more money to public education in southern Nevada voluntarily: https://thepef.org/donate/.

[08grad]

Originally Posted by FML157

My niece is in 4th grade in a middle class area (centennial hills). Her class size is 32. Her teacher deserves a medal; no idea how you can effectively teach a group of 32 kids.

I don't know what the solution is, but it's frustrating to see that type of class size.

My classes this year are 43, 42, 39, 38, 36. During my last evaluation my administration wrote that they wanted more student movement in the classroom. I started laughing.