Tulsa Public Schools Spending

[patric]

Picture this. School-age children with rumbling tummies move their styrofoam trays in an orderly lunch line. It's Tuesday, and at Uintah Elementary School in Salt Lake City that means one thing for excited youngsters: pizza day. Students fill their trays with deep-dish pepperoni slices and napa salad and head to the lunch lady for checkout.

That's when tragedy struck for about 40 of Utah's smallest residents, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. If a student's lunch money account wasn't paid up, the cafeteria workers were instructed to confiscate the child's lunch. Because of sanitary issues the lunch couldn't be given to another student, so it was thrown away instead, while a hungry child watched.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/30/the-schools-that-starve-students-to-punish-deadbeat-parents.html

That was such successful PR, we had to repeat it here, at Memorial HS:


A woman is accusing a local school of forcing her daughter to go hungry, despite having money to pay for lunch.
"Takes her plate of food and throws it in the garbage. And I'm like, 'What?'" said Robbye Goddard, whose daughter was denied lunch at school.

Goddard reached out to FOX23 after a lunch server allegedly told her daughter a computer glitch erased records of what students get free and reduced lunch, throwing her food out because she didn't have money for the full price.

"What would it hurt, even if there was a glitch in the system, for her to take her name, take her money, ya know, write it down and let her eat," said Goddard.
"They're looking into their policy about throwing food away in front of children, not that they threw the food away, but in front of the kids," she said.
http://www.fox23.com/news/news/local/mother-says-tps-free-lunch-policy-needs-be-changed/nhbm5/

[sauerkraut]

Throwing money at the schools thinking to solve all the problems won't work- it makes things worse. Dooland wants to do just that.

[Townsend]

Throwing money at the schools thinking to solve all the problems won't work- it makes things worse. Dooland wants to do just that.

Let's see your plan to solve the problems.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Throwing money at the schools thinking to solve all the problems won't work- it makes things worse. Dooland wants to do just that.

I second Townsend.... make a rational, reasoned, thought out (doesn't even have to be well thought out...) statement of how you would fix the problems...!!   



I gotta see this....

[RecycleMichael]

Stop talking to sauerkraut.

[heironymouspasparagus]

Stop talking to sauerkraut.

Awww...come on.... you're no fun any more!!

But you are right - gotta get off that mess.


Thread drift moment - did I miss the tire event this year?

[sauerkraut]

The biggest school problem -as is the case in many cities- is the school system is top heavy far too many people in administration with do-nothing jobs bring home huge paychecks, cut back on administration and hire teachers. Some of the schools that spend the most money per student churn out the worst students Washington DC is one example. Throwing money at the problem has never solved any problem it just makes it worse.

[Conan71]

The biggest school problem -as is the case in many cities- is the school system is top heavy far too many people in administration with do-nothing jobs bring home huge paychecks, cut back on administration and hire teachers. Some of the schools that spend the most money per student churn out the worst students Washington DC is one example. Throwing money at the problem has never solved any problem it just makes it worse.

While I can't argue with the point about top-heavy administration, lack of parental participation is the biggest hurdle to education these days.

[sauerkraut]

While I can't argue with the point about top-heavy administration, lack of parental participation is the biggest hurdle to education these days.

Parental participation is good but in todays world it's not always practical- today many times both parents work have no time for their kids and sometimes the parents just don't care- or there are one-parent households, divorces, kids being raised by grandparents and things like that. It's a mess out there in the world of Parents participation.

[TheArtist]

  Imho, it's wrong to start the discussion with, or have the majority of the discussion be about, "more money or less money".

I think it would be wiser to start with... 

1.  What needs to be done and why?
2.  Whats the best and most efficient/cost effective way to do it?
3.  Fund that.

[TheArtist]

lack of parental participation is the biggest hurdle to education these days.

I think most people could agree to that.  The trick is, how do you propose fixing that?

[RecycleMichael]

Saying parental participation is all that is needed is a cop-out. I agree it is the most important thing, but it isn't just an Oklahoma problem. Other states have the same lack of parental involvement and are doing better than Oklahoma. We do all we can including me serving on the foundation board for my kid's school and my wife is PTA president. I also have mentored and taught chess one hour per week at another school.

It is really about funding. Prior to Mary Fallin becoming governor teachers had reasonable workloads. Now they have 30% more students per teacher. They have eliminated languages, art, and sports that help bring parents to the school and get actively involved with the classroom.

They are destroying education by taking away all the funding to pay for tax breaks for the rich. Period.

Six consecutive years of slashing budgets for education isn't some knee jerk reaction to budgetary problems. It is an insidious plan to destroy public education.

[TheArtist]

Saying parental participation is all that is needed is a cop-out. I agree it is the most important thing, but it isn't just an Oklahoma problem. Other states have the same lack of parental involvement and are doing better than Oklahoma. We do all we can including me serving on the foundation board for my kid's school and my wife is PTA president. I also have mentored and taught chess one hour per week at another school.

It is really about funding. Prior to Mary Fallin becoming governor teachers had reasonable workloads. Now they have 30% more students per teacher. They have eliminated languages, art, and sports that help bring parents to the school and get actively involved with the classroom.

They are destroying education by taking away all the funding to pay for tax breaks for the rich. Period.


Six consecutive years of slashing budgets for education isn't some knee jerk reaction to budgetary problems. It is an insidious plan to destroy public education.

Just out of curiosity.  How are our scores, drop out/graduation rates, etc. compared with 6 years ago?

Also, I get what your saying, but is your approach working to get the votes and change you would like?

[RecycleMichael]

My kids go to the highest rated school possible. Here are rankings...

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/oklahoma/rankings?int=c0b4c1

The number one and two high schools in Oklahoma are small charter schools in OKC. Number 3 is in Edmond (very wealthy) and my son's school is number 4. It is in north Tulsa with over half of the students coming from homes that qualify for free lunches because the parent's are poor.

Booker T. Washington is the best school in the Tulsa area. That link shows a college readiness of 48.1 for BTW with Jenks getting a 38.4 and Jenks getting a 21.1.

[rdj]

Oklahoma education is a multi-faceted problem.  You have large urban districts in OKC and Tulsa that struggle with children not ready to learn, parental involvements, aging facilities, extreme mobility among students, attract primarily young, fresh teachers, a property tax base that is primarily commercial and industrial (positives and negatives there) and an enrollment that is half of what it was thirty years ago.  Then, you have the rural districts, typically parents are very involved but children may not be exposed to as many learning opportunities, facilities are nice but not top of the line, but they have increasingly migrant populations and their administrative overhead is out of whack.  Last you have the suburban districts that tend to attract great teachers and administrators and they receive the same amount of per pupil money as the other districts, but their heavy residential and those residents have agreed to tax themselves to the legal max to build facilities that continue to attract more students.

In my opinion, we need consolidation in rural districts (too many fiefdoms in rural education), revised funding formulas that allow the board of education to fund by need and we have to continue to attack poverty in our urban districts.