“We’re desperate, give us money.”
“If only we had funding, we might be able to teach.”
“Students in America are failing because schools don’t have enough money.”
Nah. They have more money than they know what to do with. Every single outrageous property tax increase, teachers’ union strike, and new budget pours insane amounts of money into a black hole that eats it up and emits nothing in return except more demands.
We overfund the public school system and the vast majority of the money gets stolen, wasted, or sent off to politically connected consultants, woke textbook publishers, and the rest of the industrial educational complex.
U.S. school districts are struggling to spend billions of dollars in federal pandemic-relief money before the funding expires.
Districts have yet to spend 93% of $122 billion sunk into the K-12 education system last year as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Education.
The money, the largest-ever disbursement of federal funding for American schools, is meant to address learning loss, mental-health problems and other issues in schools caused by the pandemic. Districts are spending the money on teachers, counselors, technology, after-school programs and upgrades to school facilities.
If we wanted to do that, we should have opened up the school system and allowed the money to follow students into educational institutions that, unlike the failed corrupt public school system, actually want to serve them.
Instead, a bunch of school districts are going to frantically buy up office furniture from designated minority suppliers at a 300% markup and spend millions on diversity, equity and inclusion consultants.
“There’s a real pressure to show something for it,” said Nick Melvoin, a school board member for the 575,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District.
The district, the nation’s second-largest, has yet to spend a penny of the $2.57 billion in American Rescue Plan money it received last year. It is still trying to use up a few hundred million dollars from earlier stimulus packages.
Tragic, just tragic.
It’s hard out there for government workers who have to figure out how to spend stolen taxpayer money as fast as it comes in. Feel their pain. They sure as hell don’t feel yours.
gravenimage says
Biden Dumped $122,000,000,000 on Schools, $113,460,000,000 is Unspent
……………
This does not surprise.
The constant claims that public schools don’t have enough money does not often hold water.
For instance, in Oakland, the average spent per student per year in the public schools is $15,554. The average cost of private school in the region is $15,658 per year–almost identical, and probably a bit less than this in Oakland itself. Yet most private schools have good academic showings, but only a third of pubic school children even read at grade level, and numbers are even worse for math.
Money is not the problem.
libertyORdeath says
It’s no wonder that the public schools have lost close to A MILLION students in the past two years. It’s also not surprising to see our educational standards continue to nosedive for the sake of “equity”. I’m hoping a Republican majority congress will make school choice a main point in their legislation.
Voting with your feet and wallets works, keep doing it.
Vishnujana says
Schools will Never teach objective values. Having a state-funded mandatory school is like having a state-funded mandatory church. We had that in America until Thomas Jefferson objected. If you want to spend public funds on schools then give vouchers to parents and put education on the free market. You will get better teachers and less expense. That’s how the free market works.
In fact If you can’t homeschool your kid you aren’t very educated. It means you can’t keep ahead of a 1-12 grader. It means public schooling failed you.
You wasted your young years so a mediocre Karen could get a big fat paycheck from your property (and Federal!) taxes.
Same people who mocked home-schooling want home schooling now.
If parents work there are homeschooling groups. Khan Academy on-line is a better teacher than these communists. School is the biggest drain on the economy after military (including the overpaid judiciary—mediocre political hacks).
Since the 1970s spending on education increased from $54,000 per student to $175,000 especially by adding staff—yet education rates and academic scores have stayed the same; an example of inefficient allocation. Rebates could be given to parents to spend the cash on a school of their choice, increasing incentive for better-quality schools through profit and competition.
Spending on education tripled the last few decades as has has hiring teachers yet student performance stayed the same at most. Teachers like police today are like medieval guilds who enviously guard their privileges like socialist ‘elites.’ Waste of tax dollars. Public unions are shameless. Make them compete and watch costs drop and performance increase. Start offering real useful classes like civics (jury nullification, constitution, bill of rights etc), mechanics, firearms, marksmanship, finance, economics, gardening, healthy eating, etc. Instead of gym, survival 101; Especially cut off these universities.
Do you really need to pay teachers not to work during summers? Do ‘principals’ need $100,000 salaries? Or “superintendents” who get paid HALF A MILLION dollars? That’s why they’re all leftist socialists: socialism means gauging the actual tax paying producers and giving it to these useless cheaters. They aren’t simply beggars but robbers who hold our children hostage. Why your property taxes are so high (pigs too—including overpaid judges, the real useless ‘nonessentials’).
Of course there’s nothing wrong if you want to be socialist, just don’t expect any advancement from them. We have plenty of examples of socialist societies. They are mostly aboriginal hunter-gatherer societies (they’ve been that way for thousands of years; they don’t make much advancement). Ancient monarchies were also socialist and stagnant. Everyone collectively paid their dues to church and state. In fact the medieval peasant paid less taxes than Americans do today (about 1/6 to 1/3, whereas modern nations pay 30-60%+). In Jefferson’s time America had almost zero taxes. When the wealthy merchants and land wonders took control of America they reconstituted higher taxes and special privileges/exemptions for themselves.
A case in point:
GM and Detroit cars manufacturers lobbied and looted the treasury so CEOs could get millions in ‘bonuses.’ America wasn’t threatened with systemic collapse (that’s another corporate welfare bluff). Their jobs would have moved to cheaper, newer plants in the south where Mercedes, Nissan, bmw, Honda, etc have newer facilities. They gave billions to save 60,000 union jobs at $60 an hour in Detroit rather than moving to $17 an hour, more efficient plants in the south. Basically unions who made bad unrealistic pay and pension deals that bankrupted their companies, should not have been given free money from the American people in order to help a select corporate fee from using the government to beat their competition.
That’s called statism not free market. It’s the state picking and choosing favorites as they are doing with covid lockdowns (a prison phrase), today they simply choose their favorite big box stores. Crush the middle classes.
OLD GUY says
Biden dumped $122,000,000,000. on schools $113,460,000,000 is unspent.
Don’t worry the balance will disappear down the rabbit hole soon enough, and no one will know where it went. Funny how millions of government dollars can just disappear but the Government can keep track of every dollar I make.
I think our politicians in Washington spend more time on figuring out how to get their hands on our tax dollars for themselves than they do working for our GOOD.