Lots of interesting news today

drkelly said:
Elementary school teachers do it.
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they have the kids take breaks and switch stuff.
His whole complaint is that right now they don't do it.
 
RatLabGuy said:
they have the kids take breaks and switch stuff.
His whole complaint is that right now they don't do it.
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Yup, at our school the kids switch teachers starting in 4th grade. My oldest has 1 teacher for ELA & Science and the classes swap and the other teaches Math & SS.

My wife and I had alot of discussions in the past about indoctrination and schools teaching kids things we did not want... but we also believe that it is OUR job to teach them what we want them to know and what we expect for/from them. We are lucky that our schools leadership is still very conservative, but I still talk to my kids about they are learning in school, and make sure they know all the sides of history/etc that they are learning in school.
 
Southern_Transplant said:
I'm not sure where you got the impression I was ok with the status quo. But I recognize it will take a lot to fix things and give opportunities to those who are at the bottom third of our society. At least the current system gives kids an imperfect opportunity to advance. Looking at the outline you mentioned above those kids would have zero chance. And without them having minimal education and training, we would lose them in the work force.

Keep in mind, my parents were a single income family with four kids that used private school or homeschooling because the sexual issues and subpar academics in public school in Oregon were already present starting in 1975. So, they contributed my dad's mill wages to property taxes and received very little for it.

My bridge solution would be a voucher system. Yes, this is a wealth redistribution method. But it allows the parents to take those vouchers and use them towards some of the programs you mentioned above. People on limited incomes would finally have a choice on where to send their kids.
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Why does no one ask why?
Why would the bottom third have 'zero chance'? This is a gov't/taxpayer problem? For the life of me I can't understand how the majority just keeps paying property taxes with constant news reports about how broken, misguided, failing the school system is.
Equity and equality brings us all down, simple as that....we can see it happening in real time today. No winners and losers GUARANTEES there are less winners.

What about the boys and girls clubs, churches, neighbors, lower priced daycares, private donors and charities, whatever that will rise up in the absence of daycare schools? Overnight? Nope, but the track we are down is not sustainable either.
First there was free lunch, then free breakfast....what is next? The longer we keep down this path the more painful it becomes when it breaks. Not an easy task, but we voted for all of this nonsense and keep voting for it for some reason?

Just halve everyones property taxes and cut the school day in half. Simple.

There was that story yesterday where 2 HS students in Durham were shot on a walking trail during the school day....obviously we have a great system now.
 
benXJ said:
Just halve everyones property taxes and cut the school day in half. Simple.
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This I can get behind. Sadly, our county just did their normal 4yr revaluation, and doubled most residents property taxes.
 
benXJ said:
Just halve everyones property taxes and cut the school day in half. Simple.
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You think 100% of your taxes go to paying for schools?
Have you ever looked at your county budget? Serious question.
Go look it up and tell us what % your property taxes would decrease if you cut the school day in half (which would cut expenses by probably 25% max)
 
benXJ said:
this doesn't happen in a vacuum. this doesn't just happen by some unseen hand. i sure hope ya'll stand up against it.
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It has caused quite the uproar, as it should. In the county's defense, they reevaluate property values every 4 yrs. 2022 was that yr. The values I have seen and heard, are close to what the market has been showing, in this area, for the last few years. Supposedly, the municipalities are planning to drop the tax rate, to counter the increase in values, but we will see. I'd say, if they do not, the local govts will be thrown out next election.
 
RatLabGuy said:
You think 100% of your taxes go to paying for schools?
Have you ever looked at your county budget? Serious question.
Go look it up and tell us what % your property taxes would decrease if you cut the school day in half (which would cut expenses by probably 25% max)
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I know 100% of my property taxes aren't for public schools. Got excited and a bit ahead of myself. My bad.

Slash it! Slash it! - Ron Swanson

Public Schools are a slap-us-in-the face bloated corrupt wasteful large program....so lets start there. So much low hanging fruit its not even funny.
Then, we keep cutting.
Before long, we have cut half of the needs from property taxes.
Eventually cut property taxes in half as I was saying. You would have more of your money....I can't see a problem with that?
Slowly we will stop immediately looking to the gov't for help for every single little issue.

Oh how glorious that will be.

oh,

“We, the taxpayer, are funding our own demise,” Patterson said at the time.

wpde.com

23 Baltimore schools have zero students proficient in math, state test results reveal

Baltimore is facing a devastating reality as the latest round of state test scores are released.
wpde.com wpde.com
 
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benXJ said:
Public Schools are a slap-us-in-the face bloated corrupt wasteful large program....so lets start there. So much low hanging fruit its not even funny.
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You're correct about how wasteful it is, yet it is probably the most effective and beneficial government program we have.

benXJ said:
Then, we keep cutting.
Before long, we have cut half of the needs from property taxes.
Eventually cut property taxes in half as I was saying. You would have more of your money....I can't see a problem with that?
Slowly we will stop immediately looking to the gov't for help for every single little issue.
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It would be nice, but is about as realistic as me thinking I will grow up to be an NBA star.
 
your idea and my idea of effective must be different

yea...gonna be tough. I'll never be an NBA star either, but thankfully fixing the corrupt bloated tax system doesn't involve ball/bat prowess.

beginning to fix it is part of my 10 step campaign plan.
gotta start somewhere. gotta start sometime.
 
benXJ said:
your idea and my idea of effective must be different

yea...gonna be tough. I'll never be an NBA star either, but thankfully fixing the corrupt bloated tax system doesn't involve ball/bat prowess.

beginning to fix it is part of my 10 step campaign plan.
gotta start somewhere. gotta start sometime.
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What are you going to campaign for?
 
Ive priced enough schools to know how wasteful they are. Its ungodly how much money they waste.
 
benXJ said:
your idea and my idea of effective must be different
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"Most effective and beneficial government program we have" is also quite the qualifier. I'm open to suggestions on others that are better.
 
benXJ said:
What about the boys and girls clubs, churches, neighbors, lower priced daycares, private donors and charities, whatever that will rise up in the absence of daycare schools? Overnight? Nope, but the track we are down is not sustainable either.
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This I can get behind. Privatize charity again. Take $$ out of public control and put it into private hands.
So - does this mean we can count on you pledging all the $$ you save on taxes to support those charities?
 
This whole conversation goes back to the question of collectivism. How big or small should it be? What benefits should you get or be excluded from? Someone mentioned removing the “state sponsored” day care (schools) while there is currently a push to increase spending for direct state sponsored day care. We have a falling birth rate in the US and are well below the replacement rate. The only thing keeping our population level is huge immigration. The number one reason people are delaying rearing children; childcare.

And some of you have not spent time with people from poor neighborhoods and it shows.
 
Futbalfantic said:
This whole conversation goes back to the question of collectivism. How big or small should it be? What benefits should you get or be excluded from? Someone mentioned removing the “state sponsored” day care (schools) while there is currently a push to increase spending for direct state sponsored day care. We have a falling birth rate in the US and are well below the replacement rate. The only thing keeping our population level is huge immigration. The number one reason people are delaying rearing children; childcare.

And some of you have not spent time with people from poor neighborhoods and it shows.
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What is up with this blind ignorant push for population increase? I don't get it.
We see daily reports of droughts, floods, wildfires, tornados, animal habitat destruction, and hurricanes affecting more and more people....spending so much time and billions of $ to mitigate the property destruction and human life loss....while at the same time adding more and more people and spreading out more and more into prone and unstable areas.
What kind of insanity is this?

More taxes is not the answer and more people is not the answer.
 
benXJ said:
What is up with this blind ignorant push for population increase? I don't get it.
We see daily reports of droughts, floods, wildfires, tornados, animal habitat destruction, and hurricanes affecting more and more people....spending so much time and billions of $ to mitigate the property destruction and human life loss....while at the same time adding more and more people and spreading out more and more into prone and unstable areas.
What kind of insanity is this?

More taxes is not the answer and more people is not the answer.
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Are you prepared for even higher taxes when the population shrinks? Because it's coming.
 
Noel said:
We will see higher taxes… but I doubt very many of us will ever notice a population shrink in our lifetime… let’s be real about it.
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This is only true if we keep ramping up immigration (not popular) or start really incentivizing baby making (also not popular)
 
The argument for population growth is literally the definition of a ponzi scheme. I'm a huge proponent of pay for what you can, then die. There no reason the following generation should tote your decrepit ass along for 20yrs past your usefulness/means. The world got along just fine before shitbag fdr started all this vote pandering social welfare bs.
 
RatLabGuy said:
This I can get behind. Privatize charity again. Take $$ out of public control and put it into private hands.
So - does this mean we can count on you pledging all the $$ you save on taxes to support those charities?
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I seem to recall Britain used to have a system like this. Some famous guy wrote about it once.

A Christmas Carol Full Text: Stave 1 Page 5

Read the full text of Stave 1 of A Christmas Carol on Shmoop. As you read, you'll be linked to summaries and detailed analysis of quotes and themes.
www.shmoop.com www.shmoop.com

Let's face it, depending on Non-governmental Organizations (NGO) to fix problems often leads to underfunded programs with huge gaps in coverage that are disproportionately funded and distributed across the population.
 
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