Calvert Commie Public Schools: Part II

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In My Opinion by Trevor Bothwell

In my previous column, I reported that the county school district I live within is requiring its high school athletes to pay a flat $75 fee to participate on a sports team this year. The premise of the article was to outline how inefficiently centrally controlled public schools tend to operate, where little incentive to manage spending exists when taxpayer dollars continually pour in year after year.

Like many government officials -- including members of Congress from both major parties -- public school administrators are rarely motivated to reform their own spending habits, especially when lawmakers can simply order subsidies provided by taxpayers to be increased.

I decided to investigate the public school budget of Calvert County, Maryland, after a colleague expressed her displeasure upon hearing about the additional athletic fee her friend’s son was being charged. And anyhow, since I live in Calvert County, I figured it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check into how the school district is spending my own tax dollars.

While I chose to focus merely on my local school district, it was interesting to see how many emails I received from folks around the country expressing similar concerns with public schools in their own communities. No stranger to liberal hate mail, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from so many people longing to see this issue brought to light.

Of course, you always have your token moron who accuses you of misrepresenting the facts, and then proceeds to go about misrepresenting the facts himself in order to “prove” you wrong. Like this guy who says, “Calvert County has 42,339 people in its ‘labor force’ according to its official web site … let's see how much that huge tax increase for a $27,000 "mileage reimbursement" is costing the taxpayers: $27,000 / 42,339 = $0.637. So, rounding, let's say that costs our taxpayers 64 cents per person.”

How quantity of taxpayers available justifies wasting money on frivolous perks for a precious few and refutes my claim of monetary waste, I have no idea. Let’s just assume he’s a product of the public schools he’s so happy to subsidize.

Indeed, the vast majority of responses I received were from concerned teachers, parents, and taxpayers in general who’ve grown tired of watching public school districts repeatedly siphon valuable tax dollars for comparatively little perceived benefit. And almost all readers wondered how they could relate their displeasure to public school administrators and legislators who allocate so much of our money to public schools, while seemingly neglecting to ensure we all receive a return on our investment.

Well, one really good way to do that is to publish their concerns, like this, and hope a lot of people take notice:

-- “Palm Beach County, Florida has also instituted a fee ($50.00) on students who want to engage in sports. The local rag, a media arm of the left, “The Palm Beach Post,” is silent on the issue…”

David B.
Jupiter, FL

-- “My family and I moved to Dunkirk, Maryland last summer from Hawaii. We’re thankful to be out of THAT dreaded school system…My two children, ages 10 and 8, go to Mount Harmony Elementary [Calvert County, Md.]…When school started on 24 Aug, my kids were required to take in ‘school’ supplies that I was under the impression was for my kids to use. Big mistake on my part! My wife gave my older son enough supplies on the list to last him a few weeks. With his being a typical 10 year old, she didn’t want him losing ‘his’ supplies that we had to buy for him. Well, he comes home and says we have to give him the entire list of supplies to take in. I asked him why. He related to me that all the supplies have to be brought in and his teacher then takes the supplies from him and the school then collects the supplies to ‘issue’ throughout the year when needed by the teachers. This is communism at its best! Here I am, having to pay extra for my kids’ supplies, with zero guarantees that my child will actually get to use them.”

Lt Col TJ M.
Dunkirk, MD

-- “I sympathize with your situation. When I taught in Arkansas, that state ranked 50th in teacher pay, but 17th in administrator pay…I have taught for over twenty years. I currently teach education courses at a community college and it is my hope to send out a wave of teachers who actually think critically and challenge the status quo. Of course they will all be fired, but it will be fun while it lasts.”

Robert W.
Moberly, MO

-- “A colleague and I were assigned to design a course that would address basic skills problems in a school with a high percentage of second language students… In one school we observed an excellent instructor taking his students through a wide variety of language learning activities. I was impressed, but as I was watching I was also browsing around the room. The walls of the room were lined with 25 state of the art computer stations, and along one 12 foot length of wall were huge bookshelves filled with a wide variety of computer programs; I would guess nearly $10,000 worth of software…I asked the teacher after class if he would tell me about the programs and perhaps recommend one that was exceptional. ‘Oh, someone at the district office bought those,’ he replied. ‘I don't have any idea what they're all about. I don't even know how to start the computers. I never use them.’”

Cora Lee S.
Port Alberni, BC Canada
Formerly of Buckner, MO.; Santa Clara, CA; Metaline, WA; Seattle, WA; Flagstaff, AZ; Wellton, AZ; Yuma, AZ

-- “Way to go! It is refreshing to hear someone tell it like it is. What you said about the Calvert County Public School system is widespread all over the country. We even have some of it here in our small country town schools.”

Fearl S.
Jacksboro, TX

-- “I was recently in Alaska where I heard a lot of complaints that the schools weren't getting enough money. Our tour guides tended to be out of work school teachers. Guess what they taught! It wasn't math and science. One was an art appreciation teacher and the other taught TAI CHI!”

Carl and Barbara B.
(Residence unknown)

-- “Ohio [spends] about $1000.00 per student above the national average. As I recall the student-teacher ratio is about 18… I discovered on the U.S. Dept. of Education link my school district ran a $2 million dollar surplus in school year ending 2001 (the USED does not have current financial information). Furthermore, I discovered my school district had almost as many non-teaching jobs as teachers. I also discovered through additional research on another web site that on a national basis non-teaching jobs have increased from 2 per 100 students to 6 per 100 students the past 50 years.”

Mike M.
Mansfield, Ohio

Okay, I know. Hardly scientific “proof” of anything. But as it turns out, a simple glance at the spending of one random school district elicited the reaction of many similarly concerned individuals from around the country.

So if you’re looking for a quote from someone who really did know a thing or two about public school systems, consider the late Albert Shanker -- no right-wing lunatic he -- former president of the American Federation of Teachers:

“It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.”

That’s not proof of nothing.

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Trevor Bothwell is editor of The Right Report. Trevor can be contacted at bothwell@therightreport.com.