http://reason.com/blog/2012/04/16/nothing-left-to-cut-california-spends-20

http://www.sbsun.com/letters/ci_21221801/outrageous-behavior-by-state-legislature

http://www.allgov.com/usa/ca/news/where-is-the-money-going/pay_raises_for_legislative_staffers_pay_cuts_for_most_state_workers?news=695481

So what. Cut it. That goes for the state colleges also.

The public schools are barely functioning as schools anyway. I do not believe the reading and math scores will materially change by cutting the school year. The cognitively impaired still will have bad scores and will be functionally illiterate. The Bright students will still have high scores and will be on the way to the same occupations.

And we will have our money instead of the government having it.

Those tax increases are going to fail. The government doesn’t have anywhere near enough goodwill from the likely voters (ie the taxpayers) to be given higher tax rates.

Just because I favor a constitutional minimum implementation for public education doesn’t mean that I concede the point that the institution should exist in the first place.

In fact, I don’t.

REPEAL of Article 9 in its entirety would certainly require an astounding effort, but well worth it.

The moment you concede that the government should do something about X, there’s NO END to it. From public libraries and family planning (jeez!) to food stamps to Section 8 to landing a man on Mars.

Thanks for responding. The large number of social, economic, legal, and political changes that would be necessary to achieve that dream would be astounding.

Your question, “What problems do we need public schools to solve?” is interesting. There are certainly delicate and less delicate ways to answer it. I guess you won’t be laying any wreaths on the grave of Horace Mann any time soon…

So we would not have the spectacle of paranoid schitzos wandering our streets like we do now.

The problems the CA and the USA have now with trouble in the streets and the schools is completely self inflicted and artificial – that is we have made ourselves into a 3rd world place when were never were previously.

It’s very easy to stop. We get the federal government back onto it’s reservation – follow the existing constitutional provisions limiting federal power. If the states want a program let them do it or not.

Except from link:

“The share of Americans’ income that comes from government benefit programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, more than doubled over the last four decades, rising from 8 percent in 1969 to 18 percent in 2009″.

As I have said before, this is a multi-generational attitudinal problem whose root cause is not economic downturns, it is a way of life that permeates certain communities, and due to the recession and housing bust is creeping further up the economic ladder. With income thats about average teachers salary, I am not exactly wealthy either. I know what it is like to not have financial security(seniority ,pensions and so forth). As they say, many are just one illness away from homelessness(except of course government unionized public sector workers, that is).

I mentioned nothing about social welfare. If you want people, including middle and upper middle class people, to work hard, contribute to the economy and growth or our nation then educate their kids, provide them health care that includes life long family planning and counseling , provide them childcare, provide them time to tend to them. Again, that is what the nations in YOUR example do and no one calls it a “hand-out”. Your way is costing you more money anyway.

It seems some posters here prefer to pay for prisons.

This is 2012 California at a school board meeting, not the court of Queen Elizabeth!

Good old boy Tony gets “honored” plenty with a salary at least 5 times mine. I don’t think we need to protect his ego as well.

I know, decorum, manners, etc. But this is not about that, he didn’t insult the Super. This is about egalitarianism, a break from our European roots, and the idea that we all are supposed to have a voice in a democracy.

For some reason this really sickens me. I should start going to these meetings and speak my mind, I guess, but then I’ll surely be labeled a “troublemaker.”

For that matter, aside from natural law kinds of standards — the so-called “negative” (thou shall’t not ..) commandments — I’m no fan of government mandated *anything*.

The 18th century model you referenced was perfectly acceptable to me, inasmuch as the schoolmarm was generally compensated by the *parents* of the kids who attended the school. Room and board, a small stipend. That sort of thing.

A general purpose room in a small community center, reserved for maybe 2 hours per day to teach basic skills to poor kids, would be a modern day equivalent that I could live with, so long as taxpayers weren’t also hit up for the cost of the instructor.

The whole thing “managed” by the Dept of Parks & Rec.

Ask yourself: What “problem” do we need public schools to “solve”? I dare say that most people in the developed world nowadays would be ashamed that orphans, the abject poor, etc, who were desperate to receive some sort of education (certainly *not* pre-Stanford), were being denied that opportunity based on lack of financial resources.

When you consider how charitable Americans are, the actual number of kids who would fall into that crack would be quite small. Maybe around 1% of all kids.

That’s a “problem” with a limited scope which could be adequately addressed by the government, ie through the light hand of taxation. Property taxes, sales taxes. It doesn’t really matter. Indeed, the whole thing could be set up (in-perpetuity) with a very modest, one-time endowment, plus on-going private donations.