I've been raising cane lately at my city.

raising cane over master bike plan. Sharrows versus bike lanes. Bike lanes for kids going to school and such.

Also been raising cane over planned imrpovement of the "main" street for my town. It was a done deal when I went to give my 2 cents. Still did anyway. Talk about waste of money.

And today, I was raising cane over budget shortfall for our tiny school district. I thought it was out of line so want to have some idea on what your school district pays per year for a class. # of students per instructors and annual cost of a class.

The school district in my city has a budget of $10,500,000 of which $8,500,000 comes from California state. With other sources of funding, we are short by about $1,500,000. Next year enrollement total is 1200 students for k-5. And we have roughly 20 students per class. Sooo, we have close to $9,000 ($8,750 more exact) per student per year in total cost. times 20students per class and we arrive at $175,000 per class per year. Now how much does a teacher make?? $40k, $50K??? With all the compensation and benefits added I can't imagine k-5 school teacher getting $80,000. Doesn't the $175K figure seem bit outlandish? Naturally, I asked for the breakdown of the expenses in terms of a class rather than a total. I thoght this would make far more sense. They could not give me an answer.

Answer I did get were following:

"Well we are not sophisticated like a multi-nationals so we can't analyze the data... like you do." (I said, "I'm a program manager at a multi-national and program cost, expenditure are of great interest to me.")

"Our finances arer totally transparent, and you can see it in great detail on our city's web site"

Having all the data in the world don't do anyone any good unless you can make sense out of it.

Soo my questions to you teachers is do you have any idea what your school districts' cost of running a class for one calendar year. And if you do know, is it higher or lower than $175,000. Our school does not have second language, nor special needs program as far as I am aware. PE consists of 20 minute walk around the play ground to meet the 200min/10school day mandated by state of California. Newly built gymnasium for the children go unused. Music instruction is minimal, art instruction is also minimal. The budget shortfall is serious enough that board is considering of lay-off of science teacher and closing of school library. Text books are old and one substitute teacher blasted by saying that the geography book has countries listed which no longer exist and hasn't existed for quite some time. There are also no lockers for the kids so they all lug around 30-50 pounds of text books and workbooks each day.

I'm seriously thinking for running for a board seat come this November. There are three seats open. And they welcome any one who has more of "business" sense rather than a teacher/educator/parent background.

I personally do not mind paying extra taxes for a good cause (school is one of them) but to waste is no excuse in my book especially when the teachers are asked for a paycut forget about COLA!!

thanks for letting me rant.

GRRR!!!!