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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35661 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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When topline education funding takes a hit, I predict there will be no firing of excessive administrative personnel like diversity experts or secretaries or superfluous academic committees. The budge hits will be directly to education funding proper, textbooks and materials and the like, so the entrenched education interests can point to a shortage of textbooks and say "See what your ESA is doing to our precious children!?"

This reminds me of the other thing I saw about Arizona education over the summer. I guess a couple years ago there was a bunch of organized protesting demanding a raise in teacher salaries, and the governor and legislature allocated money to give teachers a 20% raise over the next few years. But the public school districts did not pass that money on to teachers as promised, leading to another round of demands for increases in "teacher pay":

The Arizona Auditor General released a report earlier this year showing the average teacher salary increased by 16.5% or around $8,000, less than the promise of 20% by 2020. That report shows that while most districts increased pay, only 43% of districts statewide actually met the 20% goal since there was no requirement that districts spend the money on teacher salaries.

(I do wonder how widespread salary increases of 10%+ contributed to Arizona's inflation...) Meanwhile, Arizona district superintendents are pulling down $200,000 annual salaries, plus stuff like this:

She was joined by dozens of other educators who had gathered before heading into the first Buckeye Elementary School District meeting since the Arizona auditor general’s finding that the district paid its superintendent $1.7 million in retirement credits and unused leave and then failed to note it in public employment records.

The amount of money being poured into "public education" systems in the United States is absolutely gob-smacking. I don't know who first said that "think of the children" is the root password to all government systems, but it certainly seems to be true. It will be interesting to see how things change as more parent groups catch wise to the scam. Something else I saw on social media somewhere, was that the biggest mistake Democrats made during COVID was turning "parents of school-aged children" into a special interest voting bloc opposed to Democrat policies.

Meanwhile, Arizona district superintendents are pulling down $200,000 annual salaries

Hm, I think Superintendent Chalmers could afford much more than a 1979 Honda Accord these days.

But why would he ever want to?

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