Frustration ...

Not even sure where to start with this post.

But ... Why do I get this feeling the school system in the city  I live in "duped" all of us residents?

I feel like its one of those situations where you "ask for forgiveness" later kinda thing.  We had quite a few elementary schools, some of which I understand yet I haven't seen first hand, were getting old.  So instead of doing construction/cosmetic work on these individual schools, the school board and I'm going to guess city administrators decided to tear them down and build one big elementary school.  One that has all the latest bells and whistles.  That's all well and good, I certainly would want children to have the latest "things" to make it through school successfully and walk out of school well educated.

Instead of children walking to their local elementary school, the whole city of elementary school age kids now have to ride a yellow school bus to school.  Of which, I'm sure the school district had to purchase quite a few new buses in order to bus all these children, and hire a few more people to drive these buses.  And now with the projected price of gas going up instead of down, I'm sure the cost of operating these buses are quite expensive.  Or will be in the future if the economists are right in saying we'll be paying a lot for gas in the future.

This past week we had on the ballot, a school levy that will increase our property taxes by roughly 10%.  If it didn't pass then there would have been a whole bunch of cuts to programs and people would have lost their jobs.  Not something you'd really like to see happen because this does effect the kids.

I guess I'm just dumbfounded that school systems can operate so poorly financially.  Its as if the school boards and administrators think that who cares what kind of budget we screw-up, the citizens will vote "affirmatively" to bail us out so that their precious children can still have a decent education.  With the way the market value of homes have decreased, no one wants to live in a city where the school system is less than good.  So we are forced to vote "yes", or at least we feel that way.  Or better stated, we feel like we have to entertain the notion that we should vote "yes".  It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

I don't like having my hands tied because people mis-manage public school finances.  In the "corporate" world, if a person or group of people couldn't successfully maintain a "budget", they would lose their jobs instantly.  I think we need to start holding school boards and any individuals who are responsible for making decisions regarding the finances of a school system to higher standards and these individuals should be "terminated" if a levy needs to be passed to manage the basic essentials of a school system's operations.

I'm finding it hard to believe that by building one brand new building with all the latest technology and busing more children is cheaper than closing several elementary schools and tearing them down.  Maybe in the long run, in operational costs.  But I'm thinking this levy is tied to the "will build this new building, close the old ones" and ask for forgiveness later in a form of a levy.  A levy that needed to pass in order to allow the schools to have basic essentials and to stop the bleeding of (decline in) our property values.