Surely you don't send your kids to the socialist camp?
Personnel, Payroll, is the highest cost, so it's the first and easiest to make cuts.
I know that (I taught for 8 years), but what has happened for this urgency?
The district I was in, close in size to Stillwater, had a $25000/month fuel expenditure. When we went to a football game, the district took at least 10 buses a box cargo truck, and 5-6 vans. Not all of that was necessary. I'm just saying that there are lots of places for a district to save money other than personnel
Schools do not need an armed police force. They need to pull their heads out their asses. For the last 30 years the PTA & school boards have been so busy trying to protect the students that they put the students in danger. We need to take the gloves off and let kids be kids. Do away with zero tolerance policies and reintroduce corporal punishment. A large man standing in the hallway with a paddle will deter a lot of ill behavior.
The state has reduced all of the school's funding. In Stillwater, that means 1.5 million for next year. Oklahoma leads the nation in reducing the education budget, to the tune of about 21%. That is for next year. Huge amounts of money are going bye-bye for the schools, so our kids will get a lesser education. I'm not concerned about the education for my children, we teach at home in addition to what they learn in school, but the changes they are making are ridiculous. The library budget was eliminated for next year. As in zero dollars. Yet they have bought a giant factory building for a bus barn. They are moving all of the 5th graders to middle school, 7th graders and 8th graders to junior high and the 9th graders will be in the high school. 14 year olds should not be mixed in with 18 year olds. It always works out for the detriment of the freshmen. This school district has brutal bullying problems and the administration turns a blind eye to it. The superintendent would rather make easy cuts like SROs, music, library, and field trips, than work to actually make the tough choices. The district pays $75,000 a year for cell phones. It's time that they pay for their own. Switching to personal cell phones would save the money to pay for the SROs. Boom, done. Internet is costing the schools $69,000 a year! The athletic director for the district does not teach a single class. When asked why the athletic department was not taking a single hit to their budget, he responded "We pointed out areas that we could make cuts, and were told we didn't need to make any cuts". The guy OFFERS to make cuts and the admin says no, you are fine. We have a giant Texas-style high-school football stadium that is brand new, but we are gutting the actual education budgets over anything athletic. Guess what? That stadium sits empty 75% of the year. Rent it out for concerts, make money off it. I will never understand what the issue is with this town and their lack of caring for the kids. They stifle anything that is actually fun for families, catering only to themselves and to the University.
While I agree this is probably not where I would make a cut, there is no way 100 more officers would have stopped a kid from doing that to himself. Very sad : (
State funding to the district was cut by almost 23%. With 80% of the budget being non-discretionary spending, it’s pretty easy to figure out the math isn’t going to work.
There’s quite a bit more than just three officers taking a hit though. Combining Pre-K resources by shutting down the Richmond Early Childhood Center and making other staffing cuts will be coming too. Ann Caine certainly has her work cut out and I wouldn’t take her job at three times the pay. No working solution is going to come without pain and it will surely anger a lot of people. This is a no-win situation for sure.
Just after I moved away from Stillwater, I remember they voted to raise taxes so they could build a new High School football stadium that cost $16 Million, or something ridiculous like that. It's all about priorities, I guess.
Unless something has changed, school districts can pass a tax increase to fund facilities, but they cannot do that to pay for salaries.
I taught in a freshmen center at a high school. You are exactly right about 14 year olds not mixing with the 18 year olds. Each year, you could see the senior boys licking their chops at the freshman girls. They would prey on them it was pretty sickening. Our district even tried really hard to keep the freshmen separate from the rest of the general population. Didn't work very well.
You are probably right because most of the districts cut SROs in years previous because of budget cuts!!! Oklahoma has cut school funding 22% in the last 4 yrs. That leads the country in reductions. This statistic finally caught up with Stillwater.
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