The Delphi School Board had to consider other options after a referendum saw 60% of voters say that they would rather not pay for repairs to aging school buildings that would cost $13 million.
[The alternatives] generally were, as Superintendent Ralph Walker laid out:
• A project up to $2 million.
• Several $2 million or less projects addressing different, unrelated needs or buildings.
• A project of more than $2 million but of a smaller scope than the original.
These alternatives wouldn’t trigger the referendum requirement that defeated the original plan.
I suspect that taxes for civic projects are a little like having kids. Almost nobody can afford them in advance and, if folks waited until they were financially ready to reproduce, it would be too late to have kids. Of course there is a difference between having kids when doing so means you have to forgo some luxuries and having kids when doing so means that you’ll have to depend on welfare. If the metaphor is apt, I’m not sure which situation Delphi is in.
Hoosiers do not value education. No metaphor necessary. It is quite embarrassing.
As long as public schools are controlled locally and mainly sustained by local tax money,we’ll continue to see public education as ‘just as primarily a tax issue’ and will tend not to evaluate it academically(unless it is to point out the evil of the NEA)
Ive been to school in France on several occasions (both higher and high school levels) and I’m not advocating ‘brutal’ French education but seeing any model different from our own makes us us more aware how our own education goals are set up.
There is one set of curriculum in France and every teacher does the same thing the same day all over France. The course is based on a published syllabus and everyone in class is repsonsible for knowing what’s in syllabus (whether the teacher teaches it or not).Students ,when they pass their bac at age 16, are tested both orally and written by a committee of teachers who have never taught them,so that keeps the system honest.
The French system is based on the lack of space in Universities (les Grandes Ecoles),so the job of any teacher is to ‘weed out’ the unworthy 95%…Ive seen even adults,not raised with the French system, in tears in a French classroom at higher levels.I personally was in a class once where the teacher said I had too much pre-knowledge coming into the class so I should leave the class..I thought it my right to stay so she refused to give me a grade higher than a B,because ‘I didn’t deserve it’ due to my prior knowledge. A parent dare not complain to a school about a teacher or the student would suffer( general consensus of French).
A common practice by teachers is to call only on one student for that day and then that student is asked all the questions and explains everything for that day’s homework. Then he’s effectively graded for the class for the term on one day’s performance.Pity the student who is called on a day he is not prepared;he might as well drop the course . It’s part of weeding out the slackers.
The positive aspect of French education is that any employer or univerity evaluator of student achievement knows that a grade in a small rural school means the same as a grade in a large metropolitian area.Either you have mastered the curriculum or you haven’t.
American public education has done a stellar job of assimilating immigrants and teaching us American values,and curriculum has never been the primary goal of public education,imo).That is, until university level…then American education gets serious,and is competitive with European schools. We have so many different levels of higher education so everyone can be successful.
What has happened in modern era is that every ethnic and religious group is now organized and want their stuff taught in every public school.Then we have the anti-tax groups and the anti-socialism groups. Democracy is bringing us down.I was first branded a ‘liberal’ about a comment I made about public education.I never thought about it before that.
But Napoleonic education is not the American answer for the USA.The French still view Napoleonic education reforms as modern education..