[Winona Online Democracy]
Oh-oh, I'm starting the new year with a record two posts in one
day............
But John raises an interesting point and one that is near and dear to my
heart. And I know that is an issue that our Chamber of Commerce and others
in the community are concerned about too;
Here we are in Winona with a public school system, parochial systems,
charter systems, a public university, a private university, and a public
vocational school. Some claim that we have a higher percentage of
professional educators per capita than any other city in the state. We
prepare the educational soil with public and private dollars, plant the
educational seeds with public/private dollars, cultivate the educational
soil with private/public dollars, and when the educational crop is harvested
other communities reap the vast majority of the benefits of the investment.
It seems to me that if we can't find/create jobs to keep more of our
graduates here, where will the young families come from that create the new
students to support and justify the existing education system?
Why will they stay or come to Winona to fill the seats in our schools?
Don't we need to create more job opportunities in the private sector
(particularly in manufacturing) to support and improve the health of our
education system before we can reasonably justify a larger investment in our
existing schools?
Which comes first?
Just thinking out
loud................ Mike Kirschmann
----- Original Message -----
From: "JJ" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2006 10:33 AM
Subject: [Winona] students, net assets, communities
[Winona Online Democracy]
Responding to Leslie Hittner who said, in part:
"Frankly, I don't believe it's possible to put numbers to the social "net
assets" of K-17-and-beyond educational delivery systems."
Net assets is a business term. As Leslie Hittner suggests, perhaps we will
find it clear that 'net assets' is an incomplete metric to use in public
funding, especially under the current policy of placing a greater burden
on the local community. Public companies are measured in part by net
assets, but as a body, they also have a different world-view, one that is
often irrelevant to community and human development. Let us take 'net
assets' at face-value for the moment.
It would be interesting, at least to me, to know where students go when
they enter their careers, and what the outcomes are when a
district-community bears the significant financial burden of education,
rather than supporting education by the tax-paying body that benefits from
educated individuals.
If graduates leave the district to work anywhere but the district, it
would seem the community is being entirely altruistic, correct at any
cost. Such altruism would seem to be a moral good, while a pure corporate
view could consider us a cheap resource for giving without a return, not
looking for some kind of reciprocal compensation.
If the trend is for the educated to leave the funding community, then it
would seem that Winona would eventually become financially impoverished so
that financing becomes impossible, and the system collapses, and the
collapse is likely to cause a catastrophic setback as the local economy
goes into a downward spiral to settle at a level lower than existed before
the initiation of the ideal. Costs of living rise, do they not?
Unlike a public company *who lives for the quarterly report and also can
also have a bail-out plan that benefits the CIOs and dumps the employees,
a community strives to endure and improve. A community should not have a
CIO-type mentality. Imagine looking at your children's welfare only in
terms of three-month periods and never longer, and to dump them when they
are no longer cost-effective. It is, in fact criminal, but it is the
corporate Net Assets Way.
If a public company were to take on the task of educating all of our
children, it would not survive without lobbying for all the tax
advantages, state and federal support they deemed necessary, and they
would likely succeed in that regard - at least given the current political
state of affairs.
Good schools can bring a community to form around the schools rather than
the other way around. A properly funded system can help it happen, be it
tax supported or a successful private enterprise in a demanding,
competitive environment. Competition and demanding clients are key in the
later.
I would still fear for the CIO bail-out phenomena in a commercial schools
system. We cannot dump children as if they were commercial assets. I also
fear that the public is not particularly demanding, as evinced by some
tragic commercial enterprises leeching off of Winona today without a
whimper of public objection.
* I wrote 'who' above rather than 'what' because a corporation is
considered by constitutional interpretation to have certain individual
rights but without individual responsibilities.
jj (that is John J Stafford)
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