Your money or your kids

[Aimless]

Twitter Link

Tbh, this probably belongs in the WTF thread. What kind of scifi dystopia do y'all live in?

[GGT]

Welcome to the Commonwealth of PA.

Luzerne County is an old coal mining town, part of the rust belt, with many challenges over the years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luzern...,_Pennsylvania

Good luck figuring out the county's cities, boros, townships, 'census-designated places', and 'other places', their governing bodies....let alone the school district and how it's operated or funded.

What's disturbing is this:

Wyoming Valley West’s lawyer, Charles Coslett, said he did not consider the letters to be threatening. “Hopefully, that gets their attention and it certainly did, didn’t it? I mean, if you think about it, you’re here this morning because some parents cried foul because he or she doesn’t want to pay a debt attributed to feeding their kids. How shameful,” Coslett told WYOU-TV.

[GGT]

More info on this issue: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/17/us/un...rnd/index.html

Hey, if 75% of US school districts report school meal debt, something is wrong.

[Lewkowski]

More info on this issue: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/17/us/un...rnd/index.html

Hey, if 75% of US school districts report school meal debt, something is wrong.

Yeah, too many poor people are being irresponsible and having kids they can't afford.

[GGT]

Yeah, too many poor people are being irresponsible and having kids they can't afford.

Says the guy who doesn't think abortion is legitimate birth control. Especially not for poor people.

[Lewkowski]

Says the guy who doesn't think abortion is legitimate birth control. Especially not for poor people.

Wow abortion as birth control is pretty fucked up.

[GGT]

Wow abortion as birth control is pretty fucked up.

If you support exceptions for rape or incest, doesn't that mean abortion is a form of birth control?

[rille]

Unreal!

[Dreadnaught]

The schools should just fund this out of the general budget so that it comes from taxes, instead of fees -- otherwise when they try to collect, we get stories like this.

Plus people are more comfortable with the idea that public schooling is fully publicly funded.

[Ominous Gamer]

The schools should just fund this out of the general budget so that it comes from taxes, instead of fees -- otherwise when they try to collect, we get stories like this.

Plus people are more comfortable with the idea that public schooling is fully publicly funded.

Schools around here can barely pay for AC upgrades and had to ask for a tax specifically to fix them. You think people are going to be ok with paying for random kids lunches? What the fuck you smoking?

[Dreadnaught]

Schools around here can barely pay for AC upgrades and had to ask for a tax specifically to fix them. You think people are going to be ok with paying for random kids lunches? What the fuck you smoking?

If people think their money is being well-spent, resistance to spending goes down. My understanding is this year's state budget contains some hefty increases. Maybe these are overdue; I don't pretend to be an expert. But — without speaking specifically to your state — education is one of those hot items where spending and frustration seems to increase at the same elevated rates.

[Ominous Gamer]

Maybe these are overdue; I don't pretend to be an expert

You don't have to be an expert to see that teachers have literally been striking to get paid anything close to appropriate compensation for their work. If the parents, and their representation, can't appropriately pay the teachers directly responsible for molding the next generation how are you going to convince people to pay for the lunches for families that the government has already determined financially fit enough to pay for their own food?

[Dreadnaught]

You don't have to be an expert to see that teachers have literally been striking to get paid anything close to appropriate compensation for their work. If the parents, and their representation, can't appropriately pay the teachers directly responsible for molding the next generation how are you going to convince people to pay for the lunches for families that the government has already determined financially fit enough to pay for their own food?

Just because teachers say they are being underpaid doesn't mean all teachers are. It's religion for teachers to say they are being underpaid. Government educational spending is enormous and has been growing faster than inflation for a long time.

None of this should be misread to believe that teachers don't merit fair compensation.

[GGT]

If people think their money is being well-spent, resistance to spending goes down. My understanding is this year's state budget contains some hefty increases. Maybe these are overdue; I don't pretend to be an expert. But — without speaking specifically to your state — education is one of those hot items where spending and frustration seems to increase at the same elevated rates.

But state budgets and how they collect and allocate state taxes varies massively! Add to that whether a state is a net-contributor or a net-user of federal tax dollars, and how much federal funding they get for education -- it's a recipe for failure.

In PA the majority of school funding comes from local property taxes. (In my district it's ~ 80%.) The ratio between local and state is always a hot topic in the state legislature, but it's gotten even hotter as the economy has changed. We're the Rust Belt of the past, but also the Med/Tech University Ave. of the future.

The truth is that we have an educational system based on ZIP code...and that's a bad model that leads to systemic failures.

[GGT]

The schools should just fund this out of the general budget so that it comes from taxes, instead of fees -- otherwise when they try to collect, we get stories like this.

Plus people are more comfortable with the idea that public schooling is fully publicly funded.

But that's how we got here --- people didn't want their Taxes funding on-sight Cafeterias, let alone the "lunch-ladies" who would work 30 yrs making/serving food to kids and retired with a State pension. That's when public schools starting contracting with 3rd party vendors, and places like Pizza Hut or Subway began serving the 'hot meal' for students.

You make it sound easy to feed and nourish children simply because they're attending public schools, but it's not.

[Aimless]

In reality, teachers' salaries haven't kept up with inflation in many states, have been outpaced by CoL changes as a whole, and have yet to be restored to pre-recession levels. Nor has funding kept up with increased healthcare costs, which have also outpaced inflation. Even before the recession, teachers put in more hours of unpaid overtime than do most other Americans.

[Aimless]

In reality, teachers' salaries haven't kept up with inflation in many states, have been outpaced by CoL changes as a whole, and have yet to be restored to pre-recession levels. Nor has funding kept up with increased healthcare costs, which have also outpaced inflation. Even before the recession, teachers put in more hours of unpaid overtime than do most other Americans.

So shoo.

[Aimless]

Come on man you know that Dread has entered that stage of soulless emotional decrepitude where comments like that just makes him feel

[Dreadnaught]

Education costs have outpaced inflation, hence parental resistance to just throw more money at it.