Why you should never, EVER, vote for increased public school funding.

Otherwise titled, "The one where Kristi might actually make a few enemies."

You could skip this whole post and read this. You'll get the same point.

As many of my old high school and college friends (many meaning about 4) have discovered, Will and I have some crazy unexpected ideas about things. Politics, money, religion...you name it and we've got our own little philosphy on it. So while some moms are posting cute pictures and funny stories, I'm often speechifying it up with multi pointed diatribes about how everyone should see things my way.

This is one of those posts.

Education. Most homeschoolers have had to do some hardcore soul searching to commit to this endeavor. I won't give the whole story here, but I decided to homeschool when I couldn't get a job teaching here in town. And once I began teaching my own kids I felt gloriously liberated from the nonsense that goes into the public school beaurocracy. So I'm doing my dream job for free. Good for me.

This was an easy decision to make. I had two years as a kindergarten teacher in a low income school under my belt. A low income school where the teachers had several hundreds of dollars given to them to put into their classroom supplies (new puzzles and toys) at the beginning of the year. A school where everyone got a free breakfast and lunch, even if your daddy made $50,000 a year. I could say to my principal, "I'd like to go to this professional development class...can the district pay for it?" Absolutely. And several hundreds of dollars later I learned some new songs about vowels and syllables.

There are many reasons why public schools are falling apart. Write me privately and I'll give you a multi page essay on the history of education and how we got to this incredible low point. (Let's see how many people take me up on that one.) But the main reason, the big, fat, stinking elephant in the room of a reason, is that taxpayers are funding a monopoly. No competition. If someone gave me over $8,000 to educate their kids (the average amount the public school system is currently spending per student) you can bet I'd get those little fools into freakin' Harvard by their 18th birthday. Never let anyone tell you schools need more money. They need competition. They need good management. They need to drop social studies and insert history. They need to drop character ed and teach the kids some freaking geography.

How much longer are we going to get by with American students being the retards of the world?

I never use the word retard. But desperate times call for desperate measures. So...you can't homeschool and private school is out of the question. It's ok. Just keep your eyes open. The word of the day is supplement. I have no judgement for anyone, whatever their education decisions are. But I do offer serious warnings to anyone who leaves it up to the public school system to educate their kids entirely.

This speech was brought to you by a glory hallelujah! article I read this afternoon. The same one posted at the top. And you don't know how hard it was to not write more. I'm cookoo for homeschooling.

By the way, I love teachers. I still call myself a teacher. I am not an anti-teachmite.

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