I see a team or five running for school committee which scares me.

The so-called dream team scares me to look at.

It looks to me like four soccer moms and some smiling guy. Just what we need. The parents of students running the show.

That ought to be considered a conflict of interest to begin with and it looks to me that no good is likely to come out of a team like that. The first thing they will do as ask for more money instead of looking to spend what they have a little more efficiently. 

Of course, it not like the parents of students don't have an agenda.....

Of course, the ad says "Accountability to taxpayers". Yeah, right.

(Those crayon eating second graders NEED a laptop powerful enough to run the space program!)  

If you think that the way you judge a school system is by how much money they spend per student then try looking at some of the cities and tell me what kind of education they deliver.

I have no problem whatsoever with spending money to our young people. Education is a good thing and more and these days kids need it to go anywhere. It pays good dividends to all of us in the long run.

What I DON'T want to see is spending perfectly good money and getting little or nothing in return.

Back in Bill Clinton's day he wanted every schoolkid to be able to log into the internet which made sense and makes sense today even more so. Computer literacy is important and a computer illiterate child is going to have a hard row to hoe. 

Still, I can just picture what the dream team is going to ask for and I'd bet a pretty good chunk of it is going to be wasteful. 

The other thing is they look like the type that will fall for every big and little expensive 'good idea' that comes down the pike. A second grade kid doesn't need a brand new laptop every fall. While technology does change fast, it sure as hell doesn't change that fast.

Of course, that would be a slam dunk easy sell to a naive soccer mom. All the salesman has to say is, "You don't want to cheat the children out of the latest technology, do you? Sign here."

Scribble, scribble. And presto! Now the kids that are still eating crayons now have laptops capable of running the entire space program.  Of course, we are paying for it.

One area I would like to see them spend a little money on is the truly top level gifted kids, the top .25% that are brilliant and are constantly being held back. Instead we spend a lot on the slower kids. I suppose that the slower kids need a little extra help but there's no reason we should hold back the truly brilliant. These are the kids that will go out and cure cancer or invent a vaccination of some sort. Let's spend some money on success!

This is the place for the earlier mentioned laptops that are capable of running the space program! Give them to these brilliant kids and turn them loose!

Betcha the dream team doesn't think that way. If they do I would be surprised.

Actually a lot of teachers really don't know what to do with these brilliant kids because they are in a situation where they have to really be on their game. They have to push themselves to keep up with their students in some cases. 

I always wonder about the mentality of people that run for school committee. 

My guess is that they are parents of students that want to make damned good and sure their kids get a bigger slice of the pie than the average kid. You can bet your ass that any teacher that has one of their kids in their class is going to tread lightly and probably let the little whelp get away with murder.

"His/her mother is on the SCHOOL COMMITTEE!" will be the watchword among the teachers. 

Of course, if the mother is one of those 'My kid is an angel' type idiots then the teacher is truly screwed. The little punk can probably stab a schoolmate and the teachers will cover it up because his mother is on the school committee and they are now in fear of their jobs if they report the little saint.

Frankly I see little good of a school committee where the members of it are parents of students in that school. Little good is likely to come of it. It is simply a de facto conflict on interest.

The true test of a public school system isn't how much money is spent per student. It's how well prepared they are to either go on to further education (college or vocational) or enter the work force successfully. 










To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY