Apples to oranges.
All of you who are complaining about how much we spend on the military versus how much we are spending on education are comparing apples to oranges.
The federal government funds the military - states fund education. Even if the federal government stopped funding the military, that money would not make it into the education system so quit your whining about military spending. Not all of us live in your special fantasy world where China, Russia, Iran and North Korea will stop hating us if we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Do some of us a favor before you go making bold statements about defense spending and education spending - figure out which is a federal and which is a state responsibility. It makes for a much more informed argument.
We've covered this ground before. While funding education should be a priority it should be a LOCAL and STATE priority according to the constitution. Some of you knuckleheads think that the only way out of our education and health care messes is at the teat of Uncle Sugar......
Oh and as old WingedWolf and I have established before, total government (State and Federal) spending on education is greater than defense - fact. Live with it and stop propagating bull crap for the sake of making a pointless point. Yes -several socialist and communist websites skew this data by presenting only the Federal spending - but as we have now established - that is an intellectually dishonest argument.
We need to fix the education system as badly as we need to fix the health care system - both are dysfunctional and both are, in large part, propagating their own problems. The problem is that the education system has not gotten better no matter how much money we've spent on it. The problem is waste and making sure the money spent on education makes it to the class room and not the administrative offices.
Example: I readily give at school fundraisers when I am guaranteed that this money goes directly to maintaining programs (like the library or the computer lab) or makes it directly to the classroom. I refuse to give another freaking penny to the California State education system until the schools are in better shape than the District offices.
Yes, our local schools have dilapidated equipment, shoddy facilities and are understaffed. On the other hand, the local District offices are nice, new and shiny - with new computers, copy machines and self-flushing toilets.
In California we have a problem. Entitlements are so high that infrastructure and education are going to take a massive hit. Until the citizens of the Republik of Kalifornia wake up to the fact that people like Lolo76 may lose their job at the expense of social experiments and administrative waste, things will get a lot worse before they get better.
Next year my kids will be going to private school. For a tad more than my tax dollars are currently being outlaid for public education - they will got to a school with a staffed library, sports curricula, a science and computer lab and each kid gets a laptop. Ask yourselves this: how can a private school, for almost the same amount of money per student, achieve this?
Laura - I hope everything turns out the best for you. We have met and I think that the kids in your District are going to miss out on having some one as intelligent, passionate and literary (for lack of a better word) helping to fuel their passion for literature. I really hope that their loss will be someone else's gain.
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