There is another great reason to support vouchers and it has nothing to do with the quality of education arguments.
It is strictly financial. So many school systems cannot keep up with the demand of running the system. They need new schools, higher pay to get qualified teachers (it is very difficult to find math and science teachers), more lawyers, more money for gas, etc. Every year, the local school board here begs for more money. Since we are a fairly urban area, the bonds pass every time. The neighboring rural counties where bonds never pass have school enrollments that are swelling due to the flight from our county. By allowing vouchers, the state would ease the financial burden on the school systems. Students would leave for competing schools, meaning less bus routes, less trailers, less overcrowded classes, and so on. Most school districts average over 8k per student per year. Several are over 10k. If vouchers were for half that, the school would actually have a surplus per student. The schools receiving vouchers should have to give the same EOC's as public schools and perform as well as public schools in their district. I really don't like the bureaucracy involved in schools system. In our county, there are many double dipping principles. They have retired so they are receiving retirement pay and benefits. They have also been rehired as principles, many at the over 30+year pay rate. This might be necessary if there were no other principles around. However, there are dozens of principles still in the classroom who can't get a job in the system. These teachers could move to another system, but due teacher supplements, they would probably make less as a principle in another system than a teacher in our system. However, by hiring one of these people as a principle, they could save a lot of money just due to the change in pay scale. You might be thinking that these double dipping principles are all head principles. Not so. One school has three principles. All three, the head and the two assistants, are double dippers. Schools in our area can't buy paper from any source either. They have certain vendors that they use, where paper is 3x as much Staples. And so on and so on. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;203748912;27390454;j Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:269145 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
