Banking Collapse Lands on America’s Schools

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Banking Collapse Lands on America’s Schools

Posted on Sep 29, 2008

By Bill Boyarsky


One of the worst casualties of the Iraq war and the Wall Street failures is the U.S. public school system, which is central to the nation’s economic, intellectual and social health. With financial resources being consumed, education cuts are on the way.

We’ll be paying for this for many years. Poorly educated young people will be unable to get good jobs. We’ll lose our intellectual capital. For that, we can thank Wall Street and its anti-regulation political friends. Thank you, John McCain and President George W. Bush. And thank you both for the war.

Sen. Barack Obama has some pretty good ideas about education, but he might as well forget them. His education proposals would cost at least $18 billion in federal funds. When Jim Lehrer, moderator of last week’s presidential campaign debate, asked him what would happen to all his plans in the wake of the Wall Street bailout, he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer.

The importance of the question was clear last week when I visited with several high school teachers at Los Angeles High School.

The school is located between the poor neighborhoods east of the city’s downtown and the more affluent neighborhoods toward the west. Its student body of about 3,000 draws from them all. Some come from comfortable homes with professional mothers and fathers. Others live in crowded one-bedroom apartments with two underpaid working-immigrant parents who may or may not speak English.

I walked through the halls with my friend John Ogden, a veteran Los Angeles High School teacher who had set up my meeting with the teachers. As he greeted a colleague and then a student, I felt that I had entered a community—a complicated one, I knew, but still a community united in a common purpose: education. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080929_banking_collapse_lands_on_americas_schools/

[Frustratedlady]

1. Well, George's aim was to kill the public school system, wasn't it?

I'd say he's coming close to succeeding. Gas for the buses alone is killing them. Some have switched to 4-day weeks to save on busing and heating expense. His destructive NCLB has done the rest.

Unfortunately, he will also kill the contract schools in the process, as they will have fewer students and suffer from the same hemorrhaging as the public schools.

I am not only angry at George, I am angry at those who voted for him and those who worked the machines to guarantee his reign.

Shame on them all.

[screembloodymurder]

2. Bingo!

We'll all be home schooling. With no job, what else are you going to do.

[ColbertWatcher]

5. The GOP's aim is to privatize EVERYTHING not just schools!

They want to privatize roads, garbage collection, water and other utilities, every facet of our everyday lives must be controlled by someone who will throw money to GOP candidates.

[Sabriel]

3. Let's not forget districts dependent on home values for revenue

As they are here in WI. Lots of the rural districts are already in the hole, and now the suburban districts will feel the pinch from decreasing taxes.

[2speak]

4. Then it is completely evident then

failed policies from the ground up all the way to the top. Nothing has worked that they put into place.