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yes, although that's tangential to the discussion, I have always wondered when the base allocation is -1 student why that isn't a net positive to the system. But I guess if you're planning on paying 1 teacher/15 kids and it dropped below 15, then at some point it creates a budget issue. It would help them get to classroom size limit though
I've heard this before, but it's something I don't get. I'm blessed to be in a position to send my kid to private school (I'm not anti-public school, there are plusses and minuses to both, and each kid is different). I obviously pay the same property taxes but Wake County has one less kid to teach. Isn't that a positive to the County, same revenue, less cost?
Now let's just do vouchers and be done with it...kidding....kidding.....I know it's not the place for that discussion :-)
So I will preface what I am about to type as an opinion that may "bother" other posters as some soy boy, hippy utopia, searching for altruism where he shouldn't, but that this opinion of mine was actually built upon my time in a private Jr HS/HS.
In general, private schooling has a certain level of insularity to it. The nature of Private allows the institution to pick and choose who can attend. It controls student body size, may require a test to get in, and then the cost of doing so, which by its very nature limits who can even get there, assuming they were accepted etc etc etc.
My HS was prohibitively expense. 45K a year (paid for by my dad's employer, which he then was taxed on as a benefit). Assuming you could get in (test wise), the economics of it would seem to make it like any other private institution in it's insularity (only certain people could attend because of cost), but given it was one of three international schools in the city I lived, it served an expat community that financially would range from Middle/Upper Middle Class (as my parents were) up to millionaire Oligarchs in my host country who would bribe school admin to admit wealthy Indonesian citizens (it was against the law when I attended the school for Indonesian nationals to go there, that law has since been changed). Where my experience broke the "insularity" was the diversity of the student body. 92 countries were represented. Every major religious belief (including non believers) was represented. There were openly gay kids in my HS. What, in theory, coming from perhaps a "I only know the States" POV should have screamed "well chit, you all were rich kids, WTF you talking about diversity" was in reality something quite different. My life was enriched incredibly not only by the education I received and the "school experience" I had, but also by the diversity of ideas, thoughts, feelings, emotions, life experiences I shared my school experience with and that formed a bond among the student body. Yes, we were all from somewhere else; The States, the UK, Australia, South Korea, China, the Middle East, Africa etc etc, by the ties that binded us, in time and space, at that place, served us well. It's fair to say that no matter what life station someone was in prior to attending JIS, the experience there broke down walls in people that, had they never been there, otherwise may not have ever fallen. It allowed for connections and the sharing of ideas and beliefs to form an understanding in the population that I don't think many who had it would claim to be a negative.
Now, here in the States people choose the Private route for any number of reasons. Maybe Safety, perhaps smaller class sizes. Better school performance. Maybe its a "legacy" thing. Perhaps there is a Religious or Political reason behind the choice. Where the model "loses" me (for lack of a better term, certainly it is every parent's right to send their kid to whatever type of school they may choose) is the insularity the model provides.
We live on a tiny planet, which seemingly gets smaller every year. We share this place with people of various ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, different racial backgrounds, different life ethos, different sexual orientations etc etc etc. From my seat, if a region (city, county whichever) goes the "private becomes baseline" route, then you systematically are building a society that has its insularity reinforced rather than broken down. You have those that are in and then those that aren't.
Insularity leads to fractured societies, where a common humility is lost to vapor of "well we're this way, and they're that way". I would argue a society, in general, is better served when its people can say "you know what, I don't know anything about your experience and you don't know anything about mine, but lets share some time and figure out what makes me, me, you, you and us, us" and that can be tough to achieve when the you's, me's and us's are homogenous (in whatever demographic/social economic way you want to slice it).
I am sure some will read this and say "school is education, it isn't a social experiment" to which I would respectfully disagree. The experiment isn't the education, the experiment is our society. Rich, poor, all races and religions, all ethnic groups , all sexual orientations all "whatever" stand to learn from one another. To learn and embrace our differences and our similarities, to learn that diversity of thought isn't a bad thing and that it is actually what makes this all work.
I know that was a long answer to a short question and but hopefully I was able to shed some light on why I feel like, what has happened in places like Cincinnati, isn't necessarily a good thing for the area, even if it may be good for individual families.
there has been a whole lot of movement to private schools this year.
A bit anecdotal, so to speak, but then you'd find almost every Raleigh private school is full and unable to take any new students and have a waiting list (now, 1 family might easily be on multiple waiting lists).
As far as I've heard, it's all been because of Covid and in-school teaching. And not necessarily feeling "safer" in private school setting, rather the fact they are actually holding school in person.
I have heard the same here. I think twingles and m378 have mentioned the wait lists in another thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBromhal
As to what Covid means to county-wide system, I think it "helps". Instead of cancelling school county-wide because some 27587 roads still have ice, now they can just make those schools virtual for a day or 3, right? The system, software, infrastructure is in place.
Very true. But will they leverage it when "normal" returns?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBromhal
In the South, especially the way NC has gone, you're going to see county-wide systems predominantly because of desegregation. That's simply not going to change. Right now a huge part of the national conversation is unequal funding of minority-dominated schools.
It was my understanding that, in short, "county makes the area so big, segregation is naturally dealt with" in so many words. And I admit, while not a native Southerner my opinion maybe worth nothing more than my Yankee roots, Segregation should be avoided.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BoBromhal
Wake County Commissioners aren't going to allow 8% Black Cary - and I ONLY use Black because that's easy to find vs FnR by city - to split off and leave 21% Wake County, 29% Raleigh, 29% Garner to deal with educating the underprivileged.
Nevermind, how is Cary going to afford to build all those schools? How much would Cary taxes have to increase to buy or long-term lease the buildings from Wake Co?
One option that I would like to see explored is a baseline cost per student, and then an additional payment by FnR %'s by school. What that means in principle is that "rich Cary non-FnR schools" might get $5K/student and "majority FnR schools in east Raleigh" might get $10K/student. I don't think that would ever fly in Cary though.
Maybe it was you and I, but it could have been THNick and I who were talking about it, but I wonder if the "MA School funding model" could solve some of this, while getting to smaller regional districts.
The MA model is basically
1. Determine a per-pupil funding floor. (Say its $11K/pupil)
2. State determines how much local property tax will provide of that number. (say in this example local prop tax can pay $8K/pupil)
3. The State, through State taxes (income/sales) then closes the $3K gap in funding).
The key feature of this is the attempt to equal the playing field, so a poorer town may get a higher floor than a rich one $9K in Cary and $11K in Henderson (to steal two local areas on different ends of the socio-economic spectrum). However, there is no ceiling to what a town can spend per pupil. So, in this example, if Cary wanted to have the best schools in the state, and they wanted to pay for that "best", they would then raise property taxes to a level where they could fund say $18K/pupil.
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with an area, through their taxation, wanting to spend more (or less) for education, as long as they hit a floor. Could it create enclaves? Sure. But taxes already do that. When we lived in MA, I couldn't afford to live in Sharon because their property tax rate was too high. So I couldn't get their schools. My aim had to be the best place I could afford. That isn't segregation. That is simple economics.
yes, although that's tangential to the discussion, I have always wondered when the base allocation is -1 student why that isn't a net positive to the system. But I guess if you're planning on paying 1 teacher/15 kids and it dropped below 15, then at some point it creates a budget issue. It would help them get to classroom size limit though
I remember when I went to school it was 1 teacher to 25-30 students and everyone did fine.
Funny this thread came up - watching the BOE meeting all I could think was "WCPSS is too big to handle this challenge"....this district is simply to big too manage a disaster like this effectively from many standpoints. Will it change anything? Nope. It won't. But it's been 6 months since we left school in the spring and there are surveys, board meetings, more surveys, and still nothing has happened. The district.is.too.big.to.manage, at least with its current structure. And by the way, WCPSS has given little to no guidance to teachers on how to handle remote teaching. Whatever you're getting has been 90% teacher driven.
And by the way when I say surveys surveys and more surveys, the teachers have gotten them too. WCPSS has had their heads buried in the sand since March. And now Cathy Moore has the NCAE on speed dial to make sure they approves everything she's doing.
But all the BOE members with challengers will still get re elected including Bill Fletcher who solicits real estate business via his board business and Lindsay Mahaffey who is married to an Apex Town Councilman.
I've heard this before, but it's something I don't get. I'm blessed to be in a position to send my kid to private school (I'm not anti-public school, there are plusses and minuses to both, and each kid is different). I obviously pay the same property taxes but Wake County has one less kid to teach. Isn't that a positive to the County, same revenue, less cost?
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Because it would affect the diversity in the public schools if too many people fled to private schools (notwithstanding the fact that private schools are pretty much full up right now).
I've been thinking about all this a lot. The short answer is, I don't think this will go on long enough to create real change. But it is something that deserves more thought. The legislature tried a few years ago, but people lost their minds, because of history with segregation (and the Republican majority's lack of credibility on education). But you have to ask yourself, do county schools really do anything to make schools more equitable? I mean, look at Durham, Orange, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools. They are vastly different in terms of diversity and equity. If you were going to design a school district for equity, you wouldn't do it that way. Then you have Wake which is gigantic and despite all their social engineering, still isn't very equitable from one part of the county to another. If you merged Durham, Orange, and CCHCS, you'd have a district that is still smaller in both enrollment and square miles than Wake. Counties are arbitrary political boundaries and using them as a basis for school districts is just as arbitrary.
It's clear in this pandemic that smaller is better. Smaller districts are open now, larger districts may not open this year. It has exposed that larger districts are poorly lead/governed. We have to ask ourselves, is this a once in a century event or is this something that's going to happen more and more often (global warming/globalism)? I don't think the practical aspects of smaller districts can overcome the current political hysteria would perceive any effort to substantially reform schools (rightly or wrongly).
One thing that gets lost in the charter school debate is it has obliterated non-parochial private education for the middle class. In this area, we have Thales, but that's about it. The other schools are parochial or elite. It will be interesting to see if this will create any lasting demand for private schools vs. charter schools. I doubt it. This pandemic will end and people will forget everything they learned.
5. Is the county simply "too big to fail"? We already see the goofiness when it snows. An icy road in HS shuts downs schools for 160K kids, while it is cold, but no snow here in WF, leaving parents scratching their heads.
I've only been on this board for a few months, in the summer no less, but I've seen this brought up so many times I feel it needs addressing because it seems some people really think this is unique to Wake Co. or only large districts. But seriously y'all, Wake County is not the only place that deals with this. Believe it or not, the same thing happens in Chapel Hill all the time. One icy road or sidewalk anywhere in the district shuts the whole thing down. Actually the mere possibility of bad weather be it snow or ice or high winds often shuts the whole thing down. Schools just seem to close more now than they did back in the day. I think people are just more risk averse. Back in my day...
I've only been on this board for a few months, in the summer no less, but I've seen this brought up so many times I feel it needs addressing because it seems some people really think this is unique to Wake Co. or only large districts. But seriously y'all, Wake County is not the only place that deals with this. Believe it or not, the same thing happens in Chapel Hill all the time. One icy road or sidewalk anywhere in the district shuts the whole thing down. Actually the mere possibility of bad weather be it snow or ice or high winds often shuts the whole thing down. Schools just seem to close more now than they did back in the day. I think people are just more risk averse. Back in my day...
You're kinda missing the point - of course it happens in small districts. I grew up in a district where I lived close to my schools ...but I also lived close to the highway department and my street got plowed fast. Other parts of town were 15 minutes away from some schools and weren't going to plowed that day. Fine. But you're talking about Chapel Hill and I find it highly unlikely the weather differs all that much from one side of the district to the other. Literally in Wake County you can have 6 inches of snow in one place and nothing in another. But the bigger issue is the length of the closures. We have been stuck out of school for 3-4 days at a time in Cary because there's ice on the roads in Knightdale - this literally happened a few years ago. It was the only place in the Triangle that was still having road issues but 160K kids had to be out of school because of it. Sorry but that's not OK. There's no common sense when it comes to that. WCPSS IS divided up into transportation districts and we should have the ability to say Green Hope district, Apex district, whatever - your buses are running. Wake Forest district, your buses aren't running. But of course we can't because "one for all and all for one" and everyone who got a medal as a kid will whine that they have to go to school when their cousin has the day off (and then vice versa on the makeup days).
It's clear in this pandemic that smaller is better. Smaller districts are open now, larger districts may not open this year. It has exposed that larger districts are poorly lead/governed.
What districts are you referring to?
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