This is a short post to release a pent up frustration that I have. This post may make me some enemies, but I will stand by my statements. Because I am PASSIONATE about our children and their education.
Our priorities as a community are messed up, frankly. Our 190 Middle School students currently have to essentially BEG the public for money to support fields trips that will help in their primary education. PLEASE support them by following the link below:
Apparently, there wasn’t room in the school’s budget to pay for class field trips. However, you know what the sitting School Board did find money for? A pole vault platform:
No need to start a fundraiser for this, no sir! They consider a pole vault platform that will service perhaps a couple dozen students twice as important as the entirety of the Middle School being able to go on their academic field trips for the year.
On a related note, I, an individual parent whose annual salary is roughly equivalent to that of one of our teachers, was able to match and exceed the entirety of the PTO’s “Directed Funds” for the 2020-2021 school year with individual donations over time directly to our teachers, largely funding over a dozen projects that the teachers felt were directly necessary for the education of our children:
While I’m sure that most of the PTO’s projects are worthwhile, only a couple of them appear to directly assist with the education of our children.
And that’s what a School District, and a PTO, should be primarily concerned with. Education. First and foremost. While the other stuff is “nice to have”, it should always come secondary to the direct education of our children’s minds.
While a pole vault is certainly a good thing to have to help train our student’s bodies and coordination, the likelihood of it directly helping them be successful in the workforce is slim.
While it’s important to give to families in need, and to support children during Christmas time, I would think we’d want to make sure that our hard working teachers have EVERYTHING they need to educate our children FIRST and foremost.
This, makes me sad. We can do better. For our children’s education. For their future. I know that we can do better than this. And we should.