<p>In my state, college is free if your parents don’t have a lot of money. To be more specific, college tuition is, but that won’t include other expenses like room & board or books. You’d have to apply for grants, scholarships, and loans for that.</p>
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<p>Undoubtably the services are varied. If poor schools have consistenly worse guidance counselors than wealthy schools, there is a systemic issue that needs to be corrected. I’d support more money to fix this problem, as long as more money would fix this problem.</p>
<p>The larger thing is that I don’t see how a $1,000,000 gift to particular schools will solve the problem, since it’s proposed to counteract the effect of the PTA fundraisers other schools are doing. It sounds much more like a keep up with the joneses effort than anything else.</p>
<p>I’m all in favor of school funding. But let’s select projects to fund based on their ability to improve students lives rather than based on categorizing them into “rich school” vs “poor school”. If a $50,000 grant would significantly benefit students at school a, then let’s fund that project regardless of whether it’s a rich school or poor school. If a $25,000 grant would not help students at school b, then let’s not fund that project whether it’s a rich school or poor school.</p>
A larger issue is there are always not enough resources (money, and more importantly supports from families/community) to help every student.</p>
<p>What is different between two groups of people is: one group thinks it is of no use or it just wastes a lot of resources and does not produce much noticeable effect so let’s not do anything about it and save the money. (Shut down the department of education altogether, maybe even starve most of federal government to death so that each individual/family has no choice but takes his own responsibility.)</p>
<p>The other group thinks we could still try as much as we can even if it is clearly an uphill battle but let’s save one child at a time even if it is not cost-effective at all to do so. (what else can we do as this is a problem that has no easy solution given the resource constraint – unless everybody loves other people’s kids as much as his/her own kid - This could only happen in a utopia world.</p>
<p>You can say one group of people have the brain but no heart, but the other group have the heart but no brain.</p>
Bay, your post was offensive. No need to get personal and judgmental. I’m not cynical. I’m pointing out the practical problems that are intrinsic in a school system that becomes dependent upon private donations. I never questioned the motives of the parents who donate. I am simply talking about human nature and the ethics that surround these issues. Laws are in place to help protect all of us from ethical issues and the possibility of conflicts of interest.<br>
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<p>I am. And I do. And I do not need a self righteous reminder from a stranger on the internet to do so. Thank YOU.</p>
<p>To strive for fairness is a huge waste of resources. It never has worked and it will not. We all are presented with opportunities, those who work harder are presented with more of them. If you take their opportunities away and re-distribute to those who did not work very hard, it will be more equalized…to much lower level for everybody though. People who work hard and contribute will not find any insentive to work hard any more or they just exit such a society and find a better place to live. This is a historical fact. We are free to believe in utopia thogh and live in imaginary world if this is our goal of life. However, those who are standing firmly on the ground have to consider historical facts otherwise they also will migrate to the imaginary world of dreamers. You choose and do not complain. Complaints are huge waste of resources.</p>
<p>We lived in a town with a harsh winter climate. The school didn’t have much money for buses, so they created this rule that you had to live 3.0 miles away from school in order to qualify for bus service. I lived 2.9 miles away from school. Fortunately, I had parents who could drive me to school each day. I’ll let you think about the mechanics of getting yourself to school when it was 10 below zero and you were in first grade and lived 2.9 miles from school, if your parents could not drive you. </p>
<p>^American kids are very privileged to be driven to schools. How about supplying the rest of the world with school buses for the fairness sake? So, who is in charge of collecting the money…ops, forgot that it is our awesomely fair government.</p>
<p>EPTR, I don’t see why a teacher would have to be overly grateful for a parental donation given for facilitites to use to benefit the donor’s children? What does that have to do with the teacher? It’s not like it’s a donation to a teacher’s salary. Parent’s who say these kinds of things to teachers ought to think it through. It is condescending, to say the least, “Be grateful I am willing to donate money to my children’s school???” What?</p>
<p>I don’t even understand that.</p>
<p>It would be like a teacher saying, “You should just be grateful I’m willing to come and work here and get paid for it.”</p>
<p>There’s this whole bizarre dialogue between teachers and parents in the public system, which is counter productive. </p>
<p>I think what we ought to do is settle on what a good mission is for our schools and stop making them places for social work and dietary politics, and just get back to the basics of teachers teach, administrators facillitate teaching, and parents send the kids to school with their homework done, or don’t whine at the teachers when the kids refuse to do the work. Teachers are too much up in home life business and parents are too much up in the school business and the government is giving schools more missions than they can accomplish and still teach the kids math and science and the humanities.</p>
<p>Public schools are desperate for more funds, but when offered more funds, they want to turn them away because school administrators might be incapable of treating all students equally as a result?</p>
<p>Schools would rather operate at the lowest common denominator than take a chance that a large monetary donation might enable one student (who will be gone in a couple of years) to be treated <em>better</em> by teachers/administrators who don’t know how to be fair?</p>
<p>I don’t even understand that.</p>
<p>It is condescending to imply that parents will donate money only to benefit their own children and not others.</p>
<p>If schools are desperate for funds, it is generally because local tax payers have refused to fully fund them, through balloting measures. </p>
<p>I could understand wanting other parents of other students to feel some gratitude for extra parental giving to the local school system, but asking teachers to feel “grateful” is just silly.</p>
<p>OTOH, I also believe asking parents to be grateful when a teacher does his or her job is also just silly.</p>
<p>Have you ever donated money to your kids’ schools? I have, and I know exactly where the money goes. It goes directly to individual teachers, per their individual grant requests, to use for classroom materials and programs. So yes, I don’t see anything amiss with expecting teachers to show some appreciation for parents who help make their jobs easier by providing needed supplies and experiences that benefit ALL of the students in their classrooms.</p>
<p>Is there an expectation that public school teachers don’t have necessary supplies and money for programming? If this is for something beyond the necessary - why are the teachers grateful? Isn’t that benefiting the families not the teacher?</p>
<p>Of course i have donated money to my children’s school for use by the teachers to aid in their teaching MY KID. (anonymously)</p>
<p>I have also, actually, donated money to schools my kids do not attend, for use by a community in need of much. (this I did anonymously, as I have done all of my donating over the years.)</p>
<p>I’m unsure why you believe the teachers should be “grateful” to have the funds to teach your children better? Teaching is a profession. If somebody gives me enough money in my budget to be able to achieve the results THEY want, I’m not “grateful” to them. I do my job. </p>
<p>Parents ought to be grateful to the millions of teachers, however, who spend their money on supplies for the kids. Now, that’s a different story.</p>
<p>ETA: I would be grateful for the person who saw me in distress and pulled over and called the police, or something. Or I would be grateful if somebody did me a favor. But, this isn’t a favor a parent is doing the TEACHER, it is favor the parent is doing other parents and the other kids.</p>
<p>This is not how it works in our state. Funds are allocated to public schools in the state budget, not by local taxpayers. We voters are occasionally asked to approve bond measures for capital improvements, and in my experience, we have ALWAYS approved them.</p>
<p>Well, if you <em>wanted</em> some kind of equipment to do your own job better, and put out a request for donated funds to get that equipment, and if someone came through and donated it to you, I would expect that most civilized people would be thankful for the donation. But maybe I am an idealist.</p>
<p>Is there not usually an expectation in the workplace that you have the necessary tools to do your job? If your boss “gives” you a color printer so that you can create a color brochure to sell customers, do you owe your boss a debt of gratitude? You could just sell the black and white brochure, right?</p>