Coming to a School near you...

[Catwoman]

Red, you obviously don't deal wholesale with the general public...If you did, you would never advocate the general public being in control of anything, much less a child's education.  Yes, you have some who are genuinely intelligent...Then, you have those that should be legally prohibited from being allowed to own anything more lethal than a toothbrush.

[Wilma]

I am lost here.  If our local school board is not running our school, then who is?  Please explain and in detail.  Give me some facts and figures.

[Catwoman]

Your locally elected school board is indeed completely in control of your school but is constrained by the guidelines/laws set by both the State and the Feds.  It is the State and Feds that set the standards for both how the school board is allowed to proceed and how the schools (from the Sup't. on down to the paras) are supposed to handle the education of the students.  Facts and figures are available online, both in terms of the published and republished versions of the school budget and also the State/Fed. disbursements to each school district.  You can go to ksde.org to get some of those figures and also the West Elk website to see if the figures are there.  The people who live in each district are responsible for electing the people who are best/highest qualified to sit on that school's board...You have to trust that the public will indeed elect those that are truly qualified...Otherwise, you just end up with those that qualify as "warm bodies" to fill that space until someone better qualified can be elected for the next term.   

[Wilma]

Then what is being said is that because of the guidelines set by the Fed and state governments, the local board cannot run the schools the way they would like.  What would happen if they disregarded the guidelines?

[Anmar]

In California, if a school board decides to not go by the federal or state mandate, they lose their state and/or federal funding.

[Wilma]

I wonder how much money we would lose if we disregarded the federal guidelines.  What would we have to give up if we lost federal money?  What would you be willing to see your school give up if it lost federal funding?  How much are you willing to pay in state or county taxes to keep our school at the level it is now?  Would you be willing to personally pay to the district what it costs the district to teach your child? 

[srkruzich]

I wonder how much money we would lose if we disregarded the federal guidelines.  What would we have to give up if we lost federal money?  What would you be willing to see your school give up if it lost federal funding?  How much are you willing to pay in state or county taxes to keep our school at the level it is now?  Would you be willing to personally pay to the district what it costs the district to teach your child? 

You could cut out sports costs and fund the school.  Theres a ton of money going to support football and such.

[Wilma]

Sports scholarships are awarded by colleges often to young people who would not otherwise be able to go to college.  The only way these young people are brought to the attention of the colleges is through their participation in high school sports.  Cutting sports would cut these young people out of their chance to attend college.

[redcliffsw]

Catwoman- Why would you need "truly qualified" people on the school board?
With all the Fed and state overseers, board members would not have to know much except
how to use a rubber stamp and sign their own name.

[Varmit]

Sports scholarships are awarded by colleges often to young people who would not otherwise be able to go to college.  The only way these young people are brought to the attention of the colleges is through their participation in high school sports.  Cutting sports would cut these young people out of their chance to attend college.

If the only way a student can get into college is because they can throw a ball, then they have no business going to college.  School should be about academics, not sports.