Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

There are ways to get by

I think as I have been around the different neighborhoods of Pickerington I have met numerous people that send their children to either a religious based school or someplace like CSG or the Columbus Academy.

As someone pointed out below they shuddered to think what would happen to PLSD if these parents didn't send their children to these schools. Many of the parents that I know have both parents working and both earning good incomes.

To suggest that there should be some kind of transfer of wealth to provide for the poor student through either tax monies or some other kind of transfer is not American in my mind. I think we are each responsible in raising our own children. If we chose to work two and three jobs or we just plain inherited the money to put our children through private schools then that is our right.

Then we have the public schools that so many of us have come to depend on. I believe our founding fathers did require that we educate our children. However we sometimes take that too far. If one is to look into the school system of today we find the expectations so high that we continue to run into the issues we are currently facing.

Do we really think the amenities currently provided by the public schools are necessary? We have parents that wring their hands with worry about their kid. There is no one that loves your child as much as you do. Yet the expectation is that the general public should provide and put up with the behavior and other issues facing the public school children just to cater these young parents.

I get the feeling that if we go on split sessions then the whole world will end for some in our community. I keep hearing about the ''High School Experience''. What a crock!!

I think we must build a school that ALL taxpayers can afford. That is never been done in Pickerington in my life time. We keep wanting and asking for more then complain that our taxes are too high. So we then start to question all taxes like the Issue 1.

If we could encourage these private schools to relocate here in the area we would have that choice and that would make it more convenient for those that wish to take advantage of a choice. It would relieve some of the burden from our own taxpayers.

St. Pius offloads 250 students

My numbers may be off a bit but I believe St. Pius has a student population around 500 or so and 50% is from Seton. At $5,000 per student annually in costs that saves the PLSD over $1.25 million.

Seton is working towards a school of its own but that is a few years off. (And it will be built for FAR FAR FAR less than the $15 million PLSD spends for a K-8 school. Maybe that's a large part of the problem around here?)

Vouchers are so ofter a code word but they are a real alternative to offloading public school demand. If PLSD spends $5,000 on a student give it to me and I'll go where I want. Competition works wonders in the real world, education should not be immune.

Free Public Education

We need to appreciate what we have. With good, free public schools, even a humble truck-driver's son, such as myself, can go to Princeton, become a lawyer, even serve on the local school board.

My small town Minnesota schools certainly were not perfect. But for those students who worked hard, like myself, they opened the door to the world, and put me on even footing with children of wealthy parents who had gone to exclusive private schools.

Public education is the essential foundation for a democratic society. It gives reality to equality of opportunity. It builds community, citizenship, compassion and understanding. It forces us to live and work with people we might otherwise never meet.

Our public schools are not perfect. But they belong to us and, if we wish, we can improve them. When I went to High School in the early 1960's, this entire nation had embarked on a systematic mission to improve education in science and math. The National Defense Education Act brought truly excellent science and math teachers into my classrooms, and provided me a graduate fellowship to Princeton, provided I committed to teach college after I finished the progrm. I am convinced that, primarily as the result of this program, I learned more Chemistry in my high school Chemistry class 40 years ago than kids learn at our high schools today.

We need another federal program like that -- one that strenghens education in science and math throughout our public schools. And we need to learn not to be shy about urging other changes in the curricula and faculty in our own schools. The BOE is not some remote body, but is elected by us to answer to and represent us. If that isn't happening, or if BOE and administration are unresponsive to public input, we have the power to remove them all.

If we want public schools that serve us all, public schools of which we can all be proud, we can have them, but we need first to take ownership ownership of them. They are our schools. We need to treat them that way.

Amen

And while we are talking about ownership -

To anyone with kids... of any age, here's some advice. Recently Bill Gates gave a speech at a High School concerning 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF...
Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

If you can read this - Thank a teacher!

If you are reading it in English-Thank a soldier!!

By Another taxpayer