Recipe for an ordinary mind (my favorite books)

  • Riding Lessons
  • Anansi Boys
  • Out of This Furnace
  • The Gathering
  • The Kite Runner
  • Water for Elephants
  • The Last Town on Earth
  • My Side of the Mountain
  • A Thousand Splendid Suns
  • A Prayer for Owen Meany

Monday, April 4, 2011

Relative budgets

I'm just back from another school budget meeting. I've been following the budget, mainly just out of curiosity... trying to better understand what some of the pieces of running a school system are before I complain too quickly. The whole "walk a mile" thing...

What I've noticed, tho, is that I think my "normal" is vastly different from the normal where I now live. I went to a city elementary school of 500 students, some walkers plus kids bused in from 3-4 adjacent neighborhoods. Each classroom had one teacher, and there were a handful of aides in the school, who came and went from different classrooms. There were counselors in the district, and they came and went from the various schools.

Now, one of the things on the potential chopping block for the district budget is having a *third* adult in pre-K classrooms. Three adults? A case was made that this third person is necessary because there are any number of reasons why one of the two mandated adults may be out of the classroom over the course of the day. Um.... so?? Are you telling me one teacher can't hold down a pre-K classroom for 10 minutes while another gets the lunch trays? With dozens of other teachers in hollering distance if there is a serious, bloodspilling crisis? I totally get wanting that aide. No doubt, it is very helpful. But...

Budgets are in the red, or they are in the black. This is true for homes. This is true for schools. Wanting something unaffordable to be affordable has nothing to do with anything. I wanted a second pair of stinkin' shoes (or not stinkin'... either way) for most of a year before I could afford them. Tough luck. There's red and there's black. No. new. shoes.

I love this town. I really, really do. But sometimes I just don't get it. This district is cushy, at least if you're in the cushy demographic overall. If it has to be a little less cushy, particularly in the interest of maintaining basic programming for the most at-risk kids, we'll live! Suck it up. There. Carry on.

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