Scottsdale Schools to have early release every Wednesday (Phoenix, Mesa: 2014, credit)

[Ztonyg]

Source: Scottsdale school district approves weekly early release | azfamily.com Phoenix

Scottsdale school district approves weekly early release

by Erika Flores
Bio | Email | Follow: @ErikaFloresTV
azfamily.com
Posted on April 11, 2014 at 6:21 PM
Updated yesterday at 7:53 PM
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Scottsdale Unified School District students could pay the price in a big budget shortfall.

The school district needs to make up $4 million, and that's coming at the cost of classroom time and teachers' jobs.

The district had a special meeting Friday to take a vote. The motion for weekly early release in elementary schools every Wednesday at 1 p.m. passed 5-0.

The district will also be laying off more than three dozen teachers and 14 administrative staff.

[don't post the whole story, just a link and a few lines]

[fennec2009]

Overrides are pretty much the only power that citizens have to ensure things like this don't happen and despite AZ having some of the worst public education in the country we just love to vote no. The state needs to wake up too but that override sure would have helped the district.

[Ponderosa]

Population growth of young families and kids has shifted to other parts of the valley. Scottsdale's school problem is that they are losing students as the population there gets older and older. With the loss of students comes a loss of state funding and they have to consolidate and close schools. Costs, though, are not neatly tied to head counts. Mesa was going through the same thing a few years back.

[PNWGuy]

I sure would like to know who voted against the tax increase to support the funding last fall. A particular demographic?

[chaparrito]

Originally Posted by PNWGuy

I sure would like to know who voted against the tax increase to support the funding last fall. A particular demographic?

I'll go way out on a limb and bet it's people with NO KIDS in school.

[pbenjamin]

Originally Posted by PNWGuy

I sure would like to know who voted against the tax increase to support the funding last fall. A particular demographic?

There's part of the problem right there. It would not have been a tax increase, but a continuation of the previous taxation level.

[Zippyman]

Originally Posted by pbenjamin

There's part of the problem right there. It would not have been a tax increase, but a continuation of the previous taxation level.

um.. yeah, but it was a *continuation* of an increase.. so it was still an increase...

you really need to give the taxpayers more credit than that - when you're trying to get it passed, it's just "temporary", once you get it passed, it's not an "increase", you've been paying it for years, why stop now?

amazing how whenever it comes times to cut jobs, not a single suit ever gets tossed out on their behind, it's *always* sports & music..

[pbenjamin]

Originally Posted by Zippyman

um.. yeah, but it was a *continuation* of an increase.. so it was still an increase...

you really need to give the taxpayers more credit than that - when you're trying to get it passed, it's just "temporary", once you get it passed, it's not an "increase", you've been paying it for years, why stop now?

amazing how whenever it comes times to cut jobs, not a single suit ever gets tossed out on their behind, it's *always* sports & music..

Increase means increase. The result of the vote was a decrease in property taxes. Public schools in Arizona are notoriously underfunded. To make up for that, most, if not all, school districts use a budget "override" to make up some of the difference. In most cases those overrides stay in place. An override is not an increase, it is a continuation of the meager funding that the district receives.

And if you had read the article you would have seen

The district will also be laying off more than three dozen teachers and 14 administrative staff.

That would be 14 of your "suits".

[Ponderosa]

Originally Posted by PNWGuy

I sure would like to know who voted against the tax increase to support the funding last fall. A particular demographic?

It should not take three guesses. The override votes that have been coming up are mostly renewals of expiring levies passed years ago when people in this state seemed to care a bit about the schools, the roads, public transport, and children in danger. Now, the me-first out-of-state, gray-haired sunshine seekers with no interest in the future of this state have changed the landscape in many ways and dragged the schools down even lower than they were.

I was astounded a couple years ago when the override renewals were voted down in Kyrene District. Kyrene always supported its schools in the past. Kyrene was one of the best districts in the state and the reason was because of community support - not just going to football games, but pitching in an extra 20 bucks a year for school amenities and programs other than football.

But as important in the losing elections as the old retiree people are, the real ones at fault are the younger people who simply abdicate their voting rights in Arizona. If we could get young people, Hispanics, civic-minded older people to the polls we would have better schools and a whole lot fewer right wing fanatics having their way at the state legislature.

[Valley Native]

Originally Posted by chaparrito

I'll go way out on a limb and bet it's people with NO KIDS in school.

I'll go out on a limb and say you're absolutely right. This is not just limited to the retirees either ... it's people of all age demographics who are fed up with our tax money being swiped from our pockets and being tossed into the black hole known as public education. The bleeding heart liberals are always pushing more funding for schools ... but even when taxes are increased, the money never goes where it's supposed to, and schools end up in even worse shape. Over 50% of the state's budget is allocated to education alone (which is a huge chunk of change). Property taxes often allocate 60% or more toward education. This is A LOT of tax money which Joe Average is paying for a free babysitting/daycare service for lazy parents to drop their kids off each day.

Education should be privatized. In reality, I know that is likely never going to happen in my lifetime ... so the alternative is making only the parents with kids in school pay the taxes. If that won't happen, then expect even more frustrated voters at the polls voting down these overrides, increase in taxes, and extensions of existing taxes. It's not just old geezers and right wingers who are sick of all this money going to schools and seeing little or no positive output from it. The brunt of the financial burden needs to be put on the parents with kids in a public school (a.k.a. free daycare program).