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Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

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Originally posted by Rightwire:
Having coached HS Hockey for many years I am well aware that most schools have cut back most if not all financial support for athletics, clubs, and activities (Band, Orchestra, cheer, etc) resulting in a Pay-to-Play situation. Some sports are more expensive than others.

Why is it, in past generations, there was budget for such items? Now, with property taxes higher than ever, it seems that schools struggle to fund just the basics?

Is it that a lot more is spent nowadays on school administration? Around here it seems we have several layers of people making $150K a year, and I have no idea what they do. Or is it that schools spend a lot more today on special needs? Perhaps the breakdown of the nuclear family, and the increase of children who come from broken homes? I clearly don't know the answer.

I do know that as I travel around the country, I see signs at schools that advertise free meals, including breakfast and lunch, at schools, including during the summer months. Perhaps priorities are different now than there were. Perhaps since we're struggling with an obesity epidemic, we should eliminate the free lunches and increase athletic funding.

It's a bit more complicated than administrative costs. A lot has to do with how schools are funded (federal grant dollars vs. state vs. local taxes). There is also a significantly greater regulatory or regulatory-type burden placed on schools. There is a need for more special ed classes, teachers, etc. School lunches for example are I believe a federal grant-funded program, but still need an administrator to manage the implementation at the district level.

You also have a greater focus on testing, teacher certifications, classroom specifications (think accessibility and the like), and any other form of "overhead" placed on the classroom -- often times with the best of intentions and resulting in unforeseen externalities.

And to your point though, there is an argument to be made about optimal district size. Consolidation of districts has sometimes resulted in an increase of overhead and not the promised decrease. But that's something that seems to vary case to case.

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Originally posted by Rightwire:
Having coached HS Hockey for many years I am well aware that most schools have cut back most if not all financial support for athletics, clubs, and activities (Band, Orchestra, cheer, etc) resulting in a Pay-to-Play situation. Some sports are more expensive than others.

I don't have any kids or any plans of ever having any kids. I will support local school fund raising efforts if they are something I can use/need, ie shirts, discount cards from local retailers, etc. I will not just give money to our schools because "we need it." We have redone the track, football field and bleachers in my home town twice since I was in grade school, but there is no money for metal shop or vocational programs....?
Kids go to school for an education. Books, classrooms, teachers, supplies. IF YOU OR YOUR KID wants to play sports, that SHOULD be the parents' responsibility. I have seen too many students passed or given special considerations just to keep them eligible for me to see them as in anyway positive. No difference than a rec league in bigger city. That is pay to play too.

I don't like those tactics either. I know there is a growing school district northwest of Dallas that proposed a bond program that was on the ballot back in November. It got squashed by the voters, so before the school year started the board of trustees announced that those playing athletics would have to pay a fee to help pay for their equipment. I've heard too, that there are 3 schools in the district were construction is finished, but they won't be opening them due to not having the budget to 'open' them, which sounds a bit fishy to me. Operating budgets, I wouldn't think, would be dependent upon passage of a bond proposal. Maybe they don't have the desks/computers/etc to equip them(?).

They should find a local screen printer that would find some cheap shirts. On the front print the HS Name & Sport. On the back let the screen print shop put their logo.

The team pays for the shirt and the screen set up, The shop donates the printing for the free advertising, Pre-sell the shirts and bank the profits, the team hand delivers with a thank you, game schedule, and personal invitation to support in person.

Better method and might even get supporters to the games

I get approached by urban yutes asking for money for 'their basketball team'. No mention of a school, organization - nothing. Looks like a scam to me.

They get the typical "No" any other panhandler or beggar verminskum gets from me. I'm sure they rake in enough to get top rated cell phones, Air Jordans or nifty 26"ers. But not from me.

In '95 and '97 when we were football state Champs, we as a team raised money for rings and jackets by selling cheesecakes. They were pretty darn yummy too.

Fundraising is a pet peeve of mine. I refuse to send my kids out begging or selling. I do allow them to participate in car washes or any activity they get paid for doing work. They're my kids and I pay for whatever activities they are involved in. The whole expecting other people to fund my kids' activities is just silly. Two of my kids swim. There were three fundraisers this last year: a car wash, selling candy bars, and a begging campaign. My kids did the car wash and I personally drove four of my family's cars through the wash.

We got two boxes of 30 candy bars each and were expected to turn in $120. I asked if I could just skip the candy bars and give them whatever the profit was. No can do. I paid the $120, took the two boxes, and threw them right in the trash in front of the people in charge of fund raiser. They said it was a waste and I agreed, but I didn't waste any time.

The begging campaign is the worst. Send a form letter out begging for money. Each family is expected to raise at least $200 and gets charged the difference between what they raise and $200. I sent 0 letters and my kids passed out the same number.

I've asked why the swim club does this. It's a pain in the ass to run and a waste of time. The response has been how great swimming is and some people can't afford it. I've seen the cars people drive, the phones their noses are stuck in, and I guarantee if I went through the finances of anyone whose kid is on the team that said they can't afford it, I could trim the fat and show them they could. The whole thing could be solved by charging an extra $10 per month per swimmer.

I'm a generous person otherwise. With time and money. Tell me you are trying to help someone other than yourself and I'll do what I can.

they might as well just have each kid set up a gofundme page and be done with it.

Our local school system keeps putting up property tax increases on the ballot with the excuse that they don't have enough money for operations. But the have enough money to light up the athletic fields brighter than daylight past midnight almost every night during the week.

Nope, not giving them or the athletic programs money until they clean up their act.

Begging in particular?? No way. The only organization that get money that way is the Salvation Army.

Reading these threads is very enlightening for me.

I’ve never had children and haven’t attended public school in well over 50 years, so most people would have no interest in anything I might say about the subject. Sometimes, however, the underlying causes of the things people complain about are partially revealed by the discussion.

I participated in fundraisers as a Civil Air Patrol cadet and often found myself in a backyard shed removing piles of old newspapers. I was usually with other teenagers, but sometimes pretty much alone. Did I have protection against the environmental hazards or the activity or against the sexual predators or “white” slavers who might have been lurking in the neighborhood? Nope, and as far as I know, not one of our parents had any qualms about letting us participate in such activities. Today, however, adolescents aren’t allowed by some parents to walk the streets by themselves, much less interact with strangers.

And then there’s the whole “helplessness” thing. I’m not much of a hand with a shovel because when I was growing up, no one put me to work digging ditches, and I’ve made a concerted effort to avoid such work since. I have shovels and can move stuff like snow and dirt with them, but I’m sure I’d disgust any shovel experts out there with my inefficiency. Then there’s the car work. I’ve changed tires, but probably not more times than the number of fingers on one hand in my entire life, and the last time was two-three decades ago. Who gets taught such things these days, and who gets told, “You’re worthless; get out of here”?

Last summer I saw one of my brothers teaching his daughter how to change a car battery, which really impressed me. When I bought a new battery a few months ago I let the store guy change mine out. Do I know how to do it? Sure. Do I like doing that sort of thing? No.

Then on a gun forum we see one post after another ridiculing someone’s ignorance of gun-handling and shooting. Okay, Mr. Critic, just how did you become skilled and knowledgeable of that stuff? Did the Firearms Fairy swoop down and sprinkle pixie dust on you when you bought your first gun and you walked out of the store with not only your first pistol, but also all the wisdom you enjoy today?

We should also remember that what’s important to know how to do or to want to be able to do changes constantly. At one time no man would have been considered well educated if he couldn’t handle, ride, and care for horses. The people who know all that today are only a tiny fraction of the populace, and that’s true even in places like where I live that have horses that can be seen during any trip out of town.

Knowing how or being willing to do almost anything is all dependent upon education of one sort or another, whether it be formal teaching, observing others, or figuring it out on our own through thought, analysis, and trial and error. Without that education, including being taught or otherwise recognizing why it’s important to know certain things, people are simply not going to know them.

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Originally posted by sigfreund:
Reading these threads is very enlightening for me.

I’ve never had children and haven’t attended public school in well over 50 years, so most people would have no interest in anything I might say about the subject. Sometimes, however, the underlying causes of the things people complain about are partially revealed by the discussion.

I participated in fundraisers as a Civil Air Patrol cadet and often found myself in a backyard shed removing piles of old newspapers. I was usually with other teenagers, but sometimes pretty much alone. Did I have protection against the environmental hazards or the activity or against the sexual predators or “white” slavers who might have been lurking in the neighborhood? Nope, and as far as I know, not one of our parents had any qualms about letting us participate in such activities. Today, however, adolescents aren’t allowed by some parents to walk the streets by themselves, much less interact with strangers.

And then there’s the whole “helplessness” thing. I’m not much of a hand with a shovel because when I was growing up, no one put me to work digging ditches, and I’ve made a concerted effort to avoid such work since. I have shovels and can move stuff like snow and dirt with them, but I’m sure I’d disgust any shovel experts out there with my inefficiency. Then there’s the car work. I’ve changed tires, but probably not more times than the number of fingers on one hand in my entire life, and the last time was two-three decades ago. Who gets taught such things these days, and who gets told, “You’re worthless; get out of here”?

Last summer I saw one of my brothers teaching his daughter how to change a car battery, which really impressed me. When I bought a new battery a few months ago I let the store guy change mine out. Do I know how to do it? Sure. Do I like doing that sort of thing? No.

Then on a gun forum we see one post after another ridiculing someone’s ignorance of gun-handling and shooting. Okay, Mr. Critic, just how did you become skilled and knowledgeable of that stuff? Did the Firearms Fairy swoop down and sprinkle pixie dust on you when you bought your first gun and you walked out of the store with not only your first pistol, but also all the wisdom you enjoy today?

We should also remember that what’s important to know how to do or to want to be able to do changes constantly. At one time no man would have been considered well educated if he couldn’t handle, ride, and care for horses. The people who know all that today are only a tiny fraction of the populace, and that’s true even in places like where I live that have horses that can be seen during any trip out of town.

Knowing how or being willing to do almost anything is all dependent upon education of one sort or another, whether it be formal teaching, observing others, or figuring it out on our own through thought, analysis, and trial and error. Without that education, including being taught or otherwise recognizing why it’s important to know certain things, people are simply not going to know them.

Since you opted to somewhat vaguely address a couple of my prior comments, allow me to respond. I have a son, have coached maybe 400+ kids in baseball over the better part of a dozen years, and work with kids in our church every week. What you'll find over the past 20+ years is a huge paradigm shift in the thinking/behavior of kids. Kids in my youth were often times 'ignorant' as to how to do something. But they were rarely completely unwilling to learn, as having any skill or ability was viewed as a positive. Kids today have been completely indoctrinated with the concept that many skills/jobs are simply beneath them (using a shovel in one of my examples, or changing a tire in another). As such, it is all but impossible to 'teach' them anything anymore, beyond how to post to Instagram or complete level 12 of Call of Duty on their Xbox. And although it may seem harsh or inappropriate to you, if you have no skills to speak of, and are completely unwilling to learn anything, you have rendered yourself 'worthless'.

My comments have nothing to do with people who know how to do something, and could do it themselves, but due to age, condition, or income, choose not to. That is 'not' the point of this.

There is a huge and growing problem with a majority of today's youth which becomes readily apparent when you spend time with them on a regular basis. And if we don't find a way to change that attitude, we will truly produce an entire worthless generation.

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Originally posted by parabellum:
I pay taxes for that school shit. If they can't get it from that, they don't get it.

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But the have enough money to light up the athletic fields brighter than daylight past midnight almost every night during the week.

Many extra curricular activities, like football band and other clubs have to be self-sustaining. They aren't funded with tax money.

Maybe I am just entering "Grumpy old man" period, but it does seem like we live in a completely different world now.
Every time somebody gets a hangnail or a bird poops on their windshield they set up a GOFUNDME page.

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Originally posted by bigdeal:
And if we don't find a way to change that attitude, we will truly produce an entire worthless generation.

Your follow-up helped me understand your position better, but I’ll reiterate my own last which were to try to point out that recognizing the need to know things and wanting to learn them are also imparted by education. Part of the reason why so many people don’t recognize why it’s important to know things and consequently have little desire to learn things is because we in this country have it so good. In the early days of automobile travel, cars often carried two or three spare tires because having that many flats during a day’s excursion was common; those drivers definitely knew how to change tires and if someone had no interest in learning how at the start of a trip, he certainly did shortly thereafter. Now, however, how often do flats occur?

More importantly, though, the reason why people don’t want to know is because like almost everything else, they weren’t taught the importance of knowing. Examples range from dropping cursive writing to ridiculing the teaching of subjects like algebra—as has been seen right here on this forum. When I was learning to become an Army school instructor, it was stressed that the first element of any class was to discuss motivation, or why the students needed to know what was about to be taught: “This might save your life,” “This will keep you out of jail for mishandling classified documents,” “This is how to obtain confessions from criminal subjects.”

To cite my examples, cursive writing isn’t just about being able to write faster than printing, it’s also about being able to read it; what would a police detective do if he found a handwritten note at a gunshot scene that he had to find someone else to interpret for him?
Algebra, trigonometry, and high school geometry are dismissed by many people as useless subjects, but I use them regularly (if not frequently) in my daily life. The people who never learned such subjects to begin with obviously see no use for them, but they make my life easier as well as opening up other fields of learning such as firearms ballistics. If, however, students are never told why they should learn things other than, “Because I said so,” it’s not surprising that they won’t have the desire to learn anything that doesn’t have an obvious and immediate purpose.

My point is that if people don’t know something, including why they should be interested in learning, it’s just as much the fault of those who should be teaching them as it is for a parent to buy her kids only shoes with Velcro fastenings so she doesn’t have to teach them how to tie shoelaces.

Failing to teach children why they should want to learn as much as they can is hardly new or different; my school days 60 years ago would have probably been much different if someone had bothered to explain to me why learning to write poems was important (assuming anyone could have). But just because we’ve been doing things a certain way for a long time doesn’t make them right. And to circle back to my original point, the fewer things we must learn to survive and prosper, the fewer things we will learn. My father was no electronics whiz, but he knew enough to be able to remove the tubes from our black and white TV and take them to the tube tester at the electronics store. How many people today even know what a vacuum tube is?

I don't have kids in school yet, but saw a FB post from a friend who has kids going into HS and they said the "school supplies list" given to them they they MUST buy is pretty ridiculous.

Where the hell is all the school tax money going if parents are getting taxed again at the start of school?

The local Philly newspaper did a big article which tells you a lot as they are very liberal, entitled "The Myth of the Underpaid and Overworked Teacher".

They don't have money for anything else now that everyone gets free meals and computers/iPads/etc

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Originally posted by sigfreund:
Failing to teach children why they should want to learn as much as they can is hardly new or different...

This is an interesting exchange, but unfortunately, we're de-railing the original subject of the thread. I think I'll just end my part of our dialogue with the comment I don't necessarily disagree with your comments or position(s). I just believe children have changed substantially since even I was a child some 50+ years ago. Where children could be convinced in years past that knowledge was power/valuable, today they tend to believe 'everything' will be handled for them whether by parents, government, or some nebulous entity they can't always describe, and as such, they really only need to know that which they themselves deem necessary. From my perspective, their version of 'necessary' only seems to encompass social media and a good grasp of Goggle search.

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Originally posted by PASig:
I don't have kids in school yet, but saw a FB post from a friend who has kids going into HS and they said the "school supplies list" given to them they they MUST buy is pretty ridiculous.

Where the hell is all the school tax money going if parents are getting taxed again at the start of school?

The local Philly newspaper did a big article which tells you a lot as they are very liberal, entitled "The Myth of the Underpaid and Overworked Teacher".

Before moving to the country in 2002, we lived in the suburbs of Birmingham and our kids were in a new school district that was one of the better ones in the state. The last year we were there our oldest was in 7th grade and youngest was in 5th. When we registered for school, the oldest one had over $800 in fees and the younger almost $600. This was for lab fees, extra workbooks, computer fees, etc. The school supply list was over $100 each. That was for public school. Well over $1500 to get them in door. Athletic fees would be on top of that and probably over $1K each when you get done with uniform and participation fees.

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Originally posted by BamaJeepster:
That was for public school. Well over $1500 to get them in door.

All right, I’m another of those old guys who just doesn’t get it, but that’s outrageous. When I and three siblings were in public school, there’s no way my parents could have afforded that in equivalent dollars. I suppose there are programs to help people who really can’t pay such ridiculous fees, but how does that make it okay?

Our little school district is one of the poorest academic performers in the state (both mathematics and English proficiency are rated at 14%) and regularly asks for more money because the roof is about to collapse or something similar. Last year, though, the high school drama department spent about $30,000 to produce a one-night showing of an adaptation of “The Little Shop of Horrors.” Including the various assistants, I’m guessing the project involved no more than 20 students out of an enrollment of over 400. The student body is 73% “minority” and 71% “economically disadvantaged.”

The money reportedly came from grants of some sort, but regardless of where it came from, it was $30K that could have been spent on something more useful to the infrastructure, staff, and/or students than two hours of moderate entertainment for a small fraction of the community.

So no, I don’t get it.

^^^ I just don't understand that at all either. My parents would have struggled to make those payments, and I likely wouldn't have been able to play football. Crazy.