Blog #5

School funding

Throughout our group conversation about school funding we all shared this one question in common. Did all parties involved with funding the school money really know how the school would disperse the money to help benefit the school, and most importantly the students in the school?

During my Junior year of high school (two years ago), I was in chemistry class and my teacher announced “the school received a grant to upgrade the technology” she was getting two new computers in her class and they where buying allot of I pads. I remember another student asking “why would they do such a thing when its other thing we could use the money for like buying more books for different subjects.” Some classes where so limited on books that they had to share, they couldn’t remove the books from the classroom, at the end of the day, even with the Technology upgrade, us as students didn’t really feel any different about coming to a public school with little funding to help us be successful.

The way school funding should be used is by having fiscal equalization so that no matter what type of school be it, public, private, or charter, all students should have an equal amount of money given to each school district to help cover the cost of supplies. First and foremost students need TEXTBOOKS. Math, Science, History, English, Spanish, French, Latin, etc. Students need other things as well, such as uniforms for extracurricular activities like JROTC, Physical Education, Cheerleaders, Dance Team, Football, Basketball, Baseball, Hockey, Wrestling, Swimming, you name it kids need it.

I’ve known teachers that have had to pay out of pocket for things they feel they needed for their classrooms. Raggedy desks, broken pencil sharpeners, things that seem trivial to fix, are losing when it comes to “state funding”. From what i’ve seen, being a former student of the public school system, I can say first hand, that they are just a little bit crappy when it comes to funding.