Thoughts on homeschooling?

[The Grand Nudger]

We're not talking about food servers in resturants. We're discussing reigning in the costs of public sector teachers unions which put a burden on states and schools districts budgets.

Actually, I think you were talking about employees buckling up when whatever outfit they work for is under-performing..but if that wasn't your intention, so be it.

I already have our district's financial data and I know its average cost per pupil. School districts and school boards of education should be given the tools to lower their current ACP's.

Excellent, so how does it measure up against private school tuition? Can we get a head to head?

I would like to see state legislators pass laws that would help reign in the public sector union costs, (esp. teachers unions),

1). Eliminate the strike option

Hmn, so what are the employees of this organization to do when they feel they're getting shafted? I assume you would also like to eliminate this option in the private sector?

2). Eliminate contract negotiations for benefits packages

Why? Should we also eliminate this for the private sector? I don't see why people shouldn't be allowed to negotiate (or renogotiate) the terms of a contract.

3). Eliminate automatic step increases, (longevity pay) and replace it with performance pay

Do you imagine that this practice is unheard of in the private sector? It's a tool used to reward longevity in an employee. I'm sure it can be abused/misused etc, don;t get me wrong, but this is another case where you seem to be singling out the public sector for something that's pretty standard in the private sector. Performance pay is going to be difficult to determine, the arguments both for and against performance pay are pretty complicated. Perhaps you would like to explore this issue further?

4). Increase the amount of students per classroom

Wow.....this one is beyond the pale. I can see where some of the others are really just extensions of ideology that isn't specific to education and I can understand why you might feel that they should be uniformly applied (I'm assuming that you are proposing that we uniformly apply all these restrictions to business btw......), but this one? I'm not aware of anyone who is stumping for this. This, out of everything you brought up, appears to me at least, to be a unilaterally bad idea.

Only the state funding portion of taxes that school districts receive follow the students to the private schools. The local taxes, (including the property taxes), remain in the school district. I'm assuming that you wouldn't object to local taxes following a student to the private schools as well.

At that point, whats the difference between a public school and a private school? Taxes earmarked for education flowing into education sounds like a system working as intended. Are there some cases where public funds shouldn't follow a student into a private school..yeah, probably. Are we going to get that head to head comparison at some point btw?

So, lets recap....

You would like to prevent educators from striking, negotiating/renegotiating some portion of their employment contracts, eliminate longevity pay and instead attach their wage increases to the ability of their students (whatever those abilities may be)....and since we're really looking to fix this broken system...you want to cram more students into each classroom in addition to all of this?