L.A. schools leader considers shortened school year to balance budget

[marmar]

from the Los Angeles Times:



L.A. schools leader considers shortened school year to balance budget
October 29, 2009 | 11:39 am


Los Angeles schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines has asked his chief financial officer to study the possibility of shortening the school year to offset part of an expected shortfall of at least $500 million, The Times has learned.

The strategy, if adopted for the 2010-11 school year, would run counter both to the direction of national reform efforts and to the wishes of Cortines, who agrees with research touting the benefits of an extended academic calendar.

"You know I fought fiercely for a longer school year and a longer school day," Cortines said.

At this week's school board meeting, Cortines said he had no alternative but to consider all options. He added that some strategies had to remain off the table. He’s unwilling, for example, to make class sizes larger in middle and high schools. Classes are too large already, he said. Nor would employee furlough days be sufficient to make up the dollar shortfall. Cortines also stipulated that he would not shorten the school year for overcrowded, year-round schools, which operate on overlapping schedules that reduce each student's school year by 17 days.

Furlough days and shortening the school year would have to be negotiated with employee unions, said district spokeswoman Lydia Ramos. Cortines will review the internal analysis from Chief Financial Officer Megan Reilly when he returns from a weeklong trip to China, which began today, Ramos said.

-- Howard Blume


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/10/la-schools-leader-considers-shortened-school-year-to-balance-budget.html

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Wake up America

Our public schools are dying. What will it take to save them?

[MadHound]

2. Deliberately trashing the public school system so that corporations can ride to the rescue

This is going on at all levels of our government, national, state and local. Frankly the goal is to have a two tier education system, a top tier that is privatized, providing quality education to the monied elite and a public system to churn out good little drones to work at McJobs.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. I wonder how much it would cost for my kids to go to college in Canada? I would

love for them to wind up staying there after graduation.

[DBoon]

11. and to create a balkanized private school system

separated by class and race

Rather than common education in the skills to function as citizens in a democracy, we will private schools targeted to narrow social strata

[imdjh]

4. I was one of 40 kids in my fourth grade class. Four rows of 10 kids. Excellent teaching and behavior

Boy/girl/boy/girl, tall kids in the back, short and near sighted kids in the front.
Everyone would recite multiplication and division tables in unison.
Everyone would do a number of things in unison.

Forty kids and one nun in a black habit.
Forty kids with parents waiting to pick them up after school.
Forty kids going to a neighborhood school.
Forty kids whose parents knew each other.
Forty kids who responded to discipline.
Forty kids who expected discipline.
Forty kids who were capable of doing fourth grade work.

There is no magic to this.

[Arctic Dave]

6. Ahh, the "the good ol days".

In todays world, you might get one out of seven.

[imdjh]

7. Boy the way Glenn Miller played.....

..... except this wasn't 1939, it was 1969.

[imdjh]

9. There were lesser lights in the room.

As long as they behaved themselves, and learned the basics of the work, they generally passed on to the next grade. And now some of those lesser lights live in really nice houses with expensive toys because they became auto mechanics, AC mechanics, and other useful occupations brilliant people aren't smart enough to do.

[DBoon]

12. I went to Catholic schools too

It's amazing how easy it is to maintain discipline when you can dump your problem kids into the public school system.

Every year a couple of trouble makers just didn't return.

You also get amazing savings by having religious orders run things. Nothing like a vow of poverty to keep your labor costs down.

[imdjh]

13. kvetch kvetch

[DBoon]

14. That's Jewish guilt. Catholic guilt is different (nt)

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. Everyone benefits from a well-educated citizenry

but few people want to fork over the tax money to prime the pump, especially Republicans or conshitatives.

[gratuitous]

8. Well, not quite everyone

And the folks who benefit from an uneducated, unskilled citizenry make buckets full of money. If people were smartened up, they might not make quite so much money that they can never spend and don't need. Or they might have to actually do something to earn it. Much better and safer to keep a significant portion of the populace down. So much less whining from people looking for their share of society's bounty.

Besides, none of those kids in school found a cure for cancer yesterday; why should we pay taxes to keep schools open today? And even if one of those kids had cured cancer yesterday, what have they done today? Slackers.

[Javaman]

10. Which will be offset by a sudden surge in crime.

but then again, how many gang members attend school in the first place.

as for parents who work, it will be interesting to see how they are able to manage the additional time there kids will be home. More expense in either day care and sitters.

Also more kids that are beyond the day care and sitter age, will now be potentially left at home with no parents or supervision.