From the bridge to schools

Well supergoober, your rant on the bridge certainly hits some valid points, but it is not just a problem with CalTrans or the state, in many ways it is a problem that is endemic to the Bay Area. I haven't researched exactly why this might be, but if you look at the damage to the LA and San Diego freeways from the Loma Prieta quake, it was fixed in a much shorter time (I believe within three years). I have no idea whether any of the following is true, but based on personal observations, which are, of course, colored by my own biases (of which there are many), I have a little hypothesis. Combine the environmental awareness and largely anti-growth political activism in the Bay Area with a cumbersome state bureaucracy and mix in equal portions of CalTrans inefficiency and the tendency of companies to underbid in order to get a contract. Then add in a generous portion of lack of accountability and local representatives garnering votes by assuring funding to bloated and/or unnecessary projects. Mix well with the tendency of large bidding companies to slow down and pad their budgets when there is no competition or incentive to finish, and bake for 19+years, and you have the Perfect Storm of inefficiency and waste. Any one or two of these can be mitigated with a fair degree of ease, but when you combine them all in the perfect proportions, voile, you have the Bay Bridge mess (and the Bay Area in general, but that is a topic for another time).

Interestingly enough, you touched on the situation with the schools budget shortfalls as a remark about how wasteful the bridge is. Now this is kind of a hotbutton issue for me anyway, and I was just reading about some of the numbers that just came out on the situation in CA schools. Disturbing at the very least (but I will get to that later). I know that you were a bit worked up and passionate about the bridge thing, but the "money could have been used elsewhere" is specious reasoning. The money for anything could always be used somewhere else, and the budget mess of the schools would not be solved with the extra 5+ billion anyway. This arguement only serves to divert attention away from the profligence of the one project and arouse passions with an issue that can easily inflame people. In short, I just don't love that argument.

But on to the schools. We spend 68 billion dollars a year (including federal funds) in this state (about 65% of the state's operating budget) on the schools to educate 6.2 million children K-12. That averages about $11,000 per child per year. By way of comparison, most Catholic grammar schools cost $4,500 per year and high schools cost $18,000 per year (in the Bay Area, anyway) that includes an estimate for uniforms, books, and supplies. That is an average of $8,700 per year. Now this comparison is not entirely fair because of a number of factors. Private schools can choose their students, there are a number of donations that can help defray costs, and the family situation in terms of educational support tends to be significantly better. It is still useful by way of comparison, however, because Catholic schools in particular have an excellent track record of serving inner city (and non-Catholic, I might add) populations with the same issues as inner city public schools, and with significantly less funding.

By the way, our current drop-out rate in CA is 24%. That's right, 24 out of 100 people do not make it through high school. That f--king sucks. I can't think of anything else to say about that, other than (neo-con alert) the competition afforded by school vouchers could do a great deal of good. The state of California is so concerned about standards and adding curriculum and certification of this BS or that, that teachers are discouraged from going through school. Couple that with a lack of support from a state bureaucracy and teachers who think that they are owed tenure even though they suck, and you get young teachers moving in droves to private schools.

My favorite line from the head of the CA teachers association came out about 10 years ago. I can't remember his name, and I don't know if he is still head, but that statement still rings in my ears. In response to the shoddy state of the schools and the poor track record of student performance in the schools (this was 10+ years ago, it has gotten worse since then) he said that he would start caring about the students when they became dues-paying members of the CTA.

Nuff said. BW.

Gotta go for know, more on this later.

johndrake6

Oh yeah, and stephen's comment is correct - I'm not really the professor, I haven't got the doctoral degree yet -that was a moniker other's stuck me with. I prefer johndrake6. Or maybe jonathanE. A professor, by the way professes the truth. I am a teacher. I teach.