Ramblings of an insomniac
I'm sitting here surfing the net because I can't sleep. I am being so nice to hubby. If I went to bed now, I would be tossing and turning and he would be awake too.
I am still wound up for the school board meeting that I went to tonight. The public portion of the meeting was four hours long. One of the major issues in my district is the budget deficit. They plan to reduce the deficit by "re-funding" bonds, revamping the kindergarten program, and laying off and reducing staff.
Re-funding bonds confused me. They were talking about selling the bonds and repurchasing them at a lower price to save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars. It sounds good on the surface, but we did not get to see how it looked on paper since they only had enough packets for the board.
Revamping the kindergarten program bothered me. They want to keep the full day option, but they do not want to pay the teachers to teach. Their great solution is that the kids will spend half a day with a certified teacher (bachelor degree) learning the core curriculum and half a day with an assistant(associate degree) for enrichment (story time, language arts, some other things I can't remember now). They did not explain how the specials (gym, art, music, library) would fit in or how the educational goals would be met. They will be selling that as a full day kindergarten program to the new parents.
They are also going to lay off more staff and cut the hours of others. This would be okay if this was the first time that they were taking this step. They just did this three months ago.
I am still wound up for the school board meeting that I went to tonight. The public portion of the meeting was four hours long. One of the major issues in my district is the budget deficit. They plan to reduce the deficit by "re-funding" bonds, revamping the kindergarten program, and laying off and reducing staff.
Re-funding bonds confused me. They were talking about selling the bonds and repurchasing them at a lower price to save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars. It sounds good on the surface, but we did not get to see how it looked on paper since they only had enough packets for the board.
Revamping the kindergarten program bothered me. They want to keep the full day option, but they do not want to pay the teachers to teach. Their great solution is that the kids will spend half a day with a certified teacher (bachelor degree) learning the core curriculum and half a day with an assistant(associate degree) for enrichment (story time, language arts, some other things I can't remember now). They did not explain how the specials (gym, art, music, library) would fit in or how the educational goals would be met. They will be selling that as a full day kindergarten program to the new parents.
They are also going to lay off more staff and cut the hours of others. This would be okay if this was the first time that they were taking this step. They just did this three months ago.