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Old 05-03-2018, 02:43 PM
 
Location: Stillwater, Oklahoma
30,976 posts, read 21,484,883 times
Reputation: 9675

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Quote:
Originally Posted by _redbird_ View Post
Same here. A lot of Okies moved west during the depression and WWII. Many are rebounding. You would not believe how many are here in rural Oklahoma.

I saw my high school yearbook online back in the late 40s. More than half of the high school students were from Oklahoma and Arkansas. They even listed their hometowns in Oklahoma. It was amazing.

We know of one guy from CA who bought 180 acres and a house sight unseen. He moved here and then started crying around when we had an ice storm. He said no one told him it got this cold here.
Maybe for another rude awakening, his electricity was disrupted for a week or so from the ice storm.
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Old 05-03-2018, 02:58 PM
 
Location: Stillwater, Oklahoma
30,976 posts, read 21,484,883 times
Reputation: 9675
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightbird47 View Post
The couple with older kids, maybe they'll not miss too much as they look like high school kids.

The couple with all the little one....PLEASE say no. Read about how the schools for kids that age range are failing their kids so badly, even if their teachers try hard, since education just IS'NT of any importance to the good old boys. And you can't blame teachers who move to California since they deserve pay meeting their level of training.

My son is married and an adult, but if I had a kid of school age I absolutely would not EVER move here.
I think Oklahoma teachers are mainly fleeing to Dallas-Ft. Worth area. In Oklahoma, I think it's mainly important to pick your town to settle in very carefully when you got kids in school. Oklahoma isn't the only state where schools are poorly regarded. This Colorado school is changing to 4 day school weeks after 6 failed bond elections. There are other 4 day school districts in Colorado. I can't remember when a school bond election in Stillwater didn't pass.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nts/452178002/
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Old 05-03-2018, 05:45 PM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,164,132 times
Reputation: 16936
Quote:
Originally Posted by StillwaterTownie View Post
I think Oklahoma teachers are mainly fleeing to Dallas-Ft. Worth area. In Oklahoma, I think it's mainly important to pick your town to settle in very carefully when you got kids in school. Oklahoma isn't the only state where schools are poorly regarded. This Colorado school is changing to 4 day school weeks after 6 failed bond elections. There are other 4 day school districts in Colorado. I can't remember when a school bond election in Stillwater didn't pass.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...nts/452178002/
Part of that is Stillwater tends to attract people from more progressive areas. They don't want their kids in a four day a week schedule. In comparison with much of OK, Stillwater is the big city and would attract newbies who wouldn't accept four days a week either.

When I was a kid, first year I went mostly to the city kindergarten. I was excessively bored and didn't get good grades but much of it was last year to me. Mom was apalled that kids were being taught to read by a system which didn't teach how to read anything you hadn't memorized. The school I went to was sponsered by the Episcopal church. Their standards were to be one to two years ahead of public schools. Mom had put me on the list early.

I remember in public school later giving the assigned book back to the teacher as I'd read it over the weekend. She picked much harder books for me instead, which was fine to me since it was boring to have no challenge. It was the reading book for the first semester. How did the other kids catch up if they'd stayed in public school (And Los Angeles wasn't really bad compared to some).

Its at least as bad now. With a kid of school age, I'd NEVER move to an area where people cared so little they wouldn't pass a bond to keep school open. My guess is the kids get sent home with work they are to do by reading ahead. But kids that age are not designed to look up the lost things to fill in the curriculam. I'd not send my kid to a four days a week school.

When I was five, Mom was very dissatisied with public school (in Los Angeles, using look and see). I went to private school for three years and when I chose to go back in 6th wiped the floor with most of the class and read two grades ahead.

Its not just about money. What do they teach? Do they prepare the kids for tomorrow? If you look at the curriculm and its filtered science, filtered by fundamentalists, then do you want your kids to be behind every kid who's taught real science? Do they teach the beginnings of critical thinking? Do they teach kids to question what is assumed? Do they prepare them for tomorrow when the religiously filtered teaching kicks them to the end of the line?

When I was a kid, the public school in Los Angeles didn't teach phonics. Mom knew lots of kids with parents who were perplexed that despite reading class their kids couldn't read well. I went to a private school after third grade, and had to catch up to it. But when I went back for 6th grade so I'd be with my friends, I took the text book home, read the whole thing, and told the teacher I'd already studied all that. She picked books for me instead. Seems just the means of how to read and I was two grades ahead. I could have skipped a grade but didn't want to not be with my friends in JR High.

Too many states are treating schools as open for the cut list and started out with lesser expectations. Too many kids can read but its hard so they don't try. When you start early then you can only hope someone cares to fully challenge them so they may be thinking citizens.

6th grade I tested two years ahead of the class. My teacher picked out books which challenged me and graded me on improving my reading level. I've always loved reading and found that the people I tend to want to be with are also readers and others who dream past the start and go past the end of the race just because its there.

My son had phonics in part of school, and had other problems, but was reading books a couple years ahead of him in Jr High and finds math 'easy'. He was read to and encouraged to read to us from the time he was old enough. Its standing him much better stead in adult life than those who were raised on videos. He started reading Lord of the Rings, which is considered adult level writing, in Jr. High.

Last edited by nightbird47; 05-03-2018 at 06:05 PM..
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Old 05-04-2018, 02:19 PM
 
23,950 posts, read 10,293,440 times
Reputation: 45753
Quote:
Originally Posted by StillwaterTownie View Post
Maybe for another rude awakening, his electricity was disrupted for a week or so from the ice storm.
Which ice storm? If you move onto acreage it does not matter where you have to be prepared. It does not cost a fortune to have a generator to runt he basics.
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Old 05-05-2018, 07:51 AM
 
Location: C-U metro
1,368 posts, read 3,202,824 times
Reputation: 1192
We chose to leave Oklahoma specifically because of the schools. We lived in Midtown Tulsa and the kids went to Edison, which is one of the better schools in the state. We left because we were dissatisfied with the education and support that could be provided by TPS with their current funding. I know that TPS wants to do better and even their superintendent teaches classes to help out.

Oklahoma state government pays the teachers, not the property owners. Property owners pay for the school buildings, facilities and school management. Thus, passing all the bonds in the world will NEVER fix the problem with Oklahoma schools. Teachers are leaving because there is no hope and no value in the position as it is currently set up. Who would ever go into $24,849 in debt (avg debt for a 4 year Oklahoma degree) for a job that pays 32k to 45k for your entire career as a teacher?!? Passing bonds just guarantees fancy gyms, foo'ball palaces and athletic coaches making 2 to 3 times more than their coworkers.

Yes, if you have young children, you should leave and leave immediately. The only other alternative is to vote out legislators but most of the legislators that are refusing to pay up are in rural areas. The schools there are even worse.

This isn't a Republican or Democrat issue. The state runs the education system and requires people to take on large debts to work in the system. It pays those employees below the cost of living and caps their earnings at an artificially low level far below the national market rate. Does this sound fair at all? Does this sound like a system that can provide a sufficient service to its customers?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...ate/100893668/
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Old 05-05-2018, 10:07 AM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,164,132 times
Reputation: 16936
Quote:
Originally Posted by flyingcat2k View Post
We chose to leave Oklahoma specifically because of the schools. We lived in Midtown Tulsa and the kids went to Edison, which is one of the better schools in the state. We left because we were dissatisfied with the education and support that could be provided by TPS with their current funding. I know that TPS wants to do better and even their superintendent teaches classes to help out.

Oklahoma state government pays the teachers, not the property owners. Property owners pay for the school buildings, facilities and school management. Thus, passing all the bonds in the world will NEVER fix the problem with Oklahoma schools. Teachers are leaving because there is no hope and no value in the position as it is currently set up. Who would ever go into $24,849 in debt (avg debt for a 4 year Oklahoma degree) for a job that pays 32k to 45k for your entire career as a teacher?!? Passing bonds just guarantees fancy gyms, foo'ball palaces and athletic coaches making 2 to 3 times more than their coworkers.

Yes, if you have young children, you should leave and leave immediately. The only other alternative is to vote out legislators but most of the legislators that are refusing to pay up are in rural areas. The schools there are even worse.

This isn't a Republican or Democrat issue. The state runs the education system and requires people to take on large debts to work in the system. It pays those employees below the cost of living and caps their earnings at an artificially low level far below the national market rate. Does this sound fair at all? Does this sound like a system that can provide a sufficient service to its customers?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money...ate/100893668/
When the school's maintaince is funded better than the teachers its a clear signel of what's important and what isn't. Especially in those first few years, an appreciation of learning is planted, and if teachers fail to connect to the students a great opportunity is lost. Sometimes its money and sometimes its policy.

When I went to kindergarden, Mom noticed that most of the kids in the neighborhood who went to public school were very poor readers. Los Angeles city schools had jedicined phonics for 'look and see'. Mom loved reading and was determined I should get the chance to love reading too, and I went to a private school, run by the Episcopal Church, which was crowded with new students. Religion was only an optional visit to a short service which most opted out of, but their English/reading classes were crowded, and busy with kids who'd been in public school and were learning them later. After three years I wanted to go back where my friends were, but I'd learned how to read by then. Sometimes the book we were supposed to read was one I finished in a weekend, where most were struggling through.

I managed well at the college classes I took too, which were predominantly dependent on reading the books which the lecture came from. If reading was so much work you missed the point of it it wasn't going to fully work if you couldn't grasp the text book.

When my son was in school, phonics had already been put to the side and then been pulled out again. My son learned to read early and it wasn't much of a challenge to him. He still loves to read. It it had been a trying task he'd not have been reading Lord of the Rings just into Jr. high.

With them it was finding the magic way of teaching, not a lack of appreciating that it was effective but it comes to the same thing. If actual teaching and its success isn't valued, you get LA before they went back to phonics, and a lot of kids who can read the words but never got the way to relate them. That depends on good and committed teachers and if they know they're clearly not valued, you won't keep them long.

OK claims its got a growing economy, but if you have to lure the people with skills from somewhere else, and they still are low on the pay grade, then the state is only a quick stop which will never grow itself into what it seeks. And the kids pay for it.
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Old 05-05-2018, 11:21 AM
 
Location: 78745
4,481 posts, read 4,536,058 times
Reputation: 7974
Quote:
Originally Posted by James Bond 007 View Post
Oklahoma has a higher % of its population on food stamps than California.

15% of Oklahoma's population relies on food stamps:
https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/f...t_oklahoma.pdf

In California it's only 10%:
https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/f...california.pdf
Maybe the states have different sets of qualifications to be eligible for food stamps. There has to more to the story.

These pollsters are not that much different than lawyers. They have coniving ways of manipulating the polls in order to get the results they want. These pollsters are a very clever bunch of people, the way they word their questions, the demographics they choose to survey, education levels of the people they choose to survey, perhaps taking a poll at a certain time of day or night can make a differerence in the results.

I'm surprised that California isn't one of the bottom 5 states with the highest percentage of its residents receiving food stamps. Rent in California is not cheap. I don't see how anybody who does not make a fantastic salary can afford to live there without receiving some kind of financial aid from either the city, state or federal government? I doubt there are any apartment in San Francisco that rent for less than 1800$ a month. That same apartment might rent for 600$ in Oklahoma. How is Califonia not one of the most poverty stricken states in the nation? It's a hard life being poor no matter where a person lives, but it seems to me it would be extra hard in California because something such as rent is two or three times as expensive as it is in much of the Midwest and South.

Last edited by Ivory Lee Spurlock; 05-05-2018 at 11:38 AM..
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Old 05-05-2018, 12:04 PM
 
23,950 posts, read 10,293,440 times
Reputation: 45753
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightbird47 View Post
When the school's maintaince is funded better than the teachers its a clear signel of what's important and what isn't. Especially in those first few years, an appreciation of learning is planted, and if teachers fail to connect to the students a great opportunity is lost. Sometimes its money and sometimes its policy.

When I went to kindergarden, Mom noticed that most of the kids in the neighborhood who went to public school were very poor readers. Los Angeles city schools had jedicined phonics for 'look and see'. Mom loved reading and was determined I should get the chance to love reading too, and I went to a private school, run by the Episcopal Church, which was crowded with new students. Religion was only an optional visit to a short service which most opted out of, but their English/reading classes were crowded, and busy with kids who'd been in public school and were learning them later. After three years I wanted to go back where my friends were, but I'd learned how to read by then. Sometimes the book we were supposed to read was one I finished in a weekend, where most were struggling through.

I managed well at the college classes I took too, which were predominantly dependent on reading the books which the lecture came from. If reading was so much work you missed the point of it it wasn't going to fully work if you couldn't grasp the text book.

When my son was in school, phonics had already been put to the side and then been pulled out again. My son learned to read early and it wasn't much of a challenge to him. He still loves to read. It it had been a trying task he'd not have been reading Lord of the Rings just into Jr. high.

With them it was finding the magic way of teaching, not a lack of appreciating that it was effective but it comes to the same thing. If actual teaching and its success isn't valued, you get LA before they went back to phonics, and a lot of kids who can read the words but never got the way to relate them. That depends on good and committed teachers and if they know they're clearly not valued, you won't keep them long.

OK claims its got a growing economy, but if you have to lure the people with skills from somewhere else, and they still are low on the pay grade, then the state is only a quick stop which will never grow itself into what it seeks. And the kids pay for it.
And you moved to OK.
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Old 05-05-2018, 12:30 PM
 
Location: Stillwater, Oklahoma
30,976 posts, read 21,484,883 times
Reputation: 9675
Quote:
Originally Posted by Threestep View Post
And you moved to OK.
I don't think the poster was sending kids to school at the time.
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Old 05-05-2018, 07:11 PM
 
Location: Cushing OK
14,539 posts, read 21,164,132 times
Reputation: 16936
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivory Lee Spurlock View Post
Maybe the states have different sets of qualifications to be eligible for food stamps. There has to more to the story.

These pollsters are not that much different than lawyers. They have coniving ways of manipulating the polls in order to get the results they want. These pollsters are a very clever bunch of people, the way they word their questions, the demographics they choose to survey, education levels of the people they choose to survey, perhaps taking a poll at a certain time of day or night can make a differerence in the results.

I'm surprised that California isn't one of the bottom 5 states with the highest percentage of its residents receiving food stamps. Rent in California is not cheap. I don't see how anybody who does not make a fantastic salary can afford to live there without receiving some kind of financial aid from either the city, state or federal government? I doubt there are any apartment in San Francisco that rent for less than 1800$ a month. That same apartment might rent for 600$ in Oklahoma. How is Califonia not one of the most poverty stricken states in the nation? It's a hard life being poor no matter where a person lives, but it seems to me it would be extra hard in California because something such as rent is two or three times as expensive as it is in much of the Midwest and South.
I don't think Califonia is high on the list as the standards for eligability for food stamps are also higher. The prices are way higher there for everything, especially food and housing. People who are near the limit but just a bit above are out of luck. And the amount of food stamps you can get is between that limit and your income, which can end up being small amounts.

On social security, based on disability, I don't get a huge check, and the main reason for moving OUT of California to OK money, as the cost of living is so much less here the check goes a lot further. But as the food stamp amount is cost connected, I think I got ten dollars a month before officially retireing and my check a little higher, too high for foodstamps.

Rent wise, the place I had was thru disability and the rent was reduced, but was still high enough I shopped for food first and paid bills before other spending as it was a fast shrinking amount. Here in OK, the money goes much much further. All of my grocery costs come out of my social security income and not food stamps. In fact, I wasn't even eligable with the disability amount.

I keep thinking about going back to California, but only when my son has got a job he can consider somewhat secure, and I'd be living with them, so I will need my own little 'tiny house' space (not necessarily a 'house' but private space and he needs to be planted in place enough there's not a move being considered.

Thing is, after living here in OK for ten years, and used to the pace of life here, which was just perfect for me, I may have grown away from California in at least a few ways and it wouldn't be 'home' anymore.
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