Dan, I'm relatively sure that the word "French" is firmly planted in front of fries and toast. Personally, any country that cloaks a desire to protect its share of oil contracts with the existing Iraqi government (for France its near 80%, and France stands to lose all of it when Sadam's regime is removed) under a flag of peace, should keep its place in front of two - more or less infamous - icons of the fast-food industry.
wow, i just found about that people are trying to change the name of french fries to freedom fries. this is possibly the dumbest idea i have ever heard. i guess the intended point of this would be to piss off the french. as we all know, im sure they think we're going to attack and are preparing they're national flag (or just a white towel or shirt or something else white). personally, i don't plan on changing the preceding word in front of fries. this is perhaps the silliest thing i've ever heard. cause im sure people are going to support the war since the name of fries isn't french anymore.
Yes, paul, you're right about the school not being legally allowed to shift funds around. But why let laws get in the way of our future? Are you just gonna sit there and take this? And honestly... do you know ANYbody of actual importance/power who would object to blurring the line between the two funds? I sure don't. It may be illegal... but that doesn't make it wrong.
Ok, Paul and Gross, you guys see what I'm getting at with my speech. Our school, as well as the state, has its priorities way out of whack with how we can and do spend our tax $. While the things we get are all fine and dandy, they would be put to much better use if we were allowed to spend it on things such as school-subsidized AP testing, security of Orchestra, extra strength chains for the special ed students, etc. And yes, I knew about our max spending, despite not hearing it from Paul and/or Rex. I wrote that article to infer how screwed up our school, and state is currently with regards to it's budget. If our community is willing to put more into our education, why stop them??? This isn't some communist controlled regime, it's capitalism. Money is power. Our parents pay exorbant taxes, so let them, and us see the benefits of it in more than super (with a gay lisp) new construction projects! Hey, this is the Anarchy times, right? Down with the current state status quo!
-Erik Greene
Whether or not I used rex?s information is irrelevant, it happens explain a great number of the myths and inaccurate statements that revolve around school spending, and deserves to be heard. As for your solutions, god willing we may someday have an administration competent enough to follow them through on them. Right now, school spending seems to be closed to ideas like yours, regardless of how logical they may be (the average processor speed on the new dells is around 2 Ghz). We need to change the way that we go about spending money. With regards to the proceeds that high school sports generates, its true that little to none of any fees collected will ever find its way back into the sports programs that earned it. For years Hopkins was able to get away with using a bottomless pool of referendum/property tax money with minimal concern for how effectively that money is being used. With shrinking budgets, school districts a like Hopkins are shooting themselves in the foot with decades old spending practices that breed poor use of resources and beaucratic waste. In regards to AP, everyone is going to feel the pinch. I?m all for using that "bricks and mortar" money to subsidize tests, but right now the law doesn?t allow for that, and the school through a combo of shrinking funds and ineffective spending doesn't have the money to fill the void the state legislature created. Spending practices need to change as the tax payers who have unselfishly donated so much of their money to our education deserve nothing less than effective and well thought out spending.
Paul, you just regurgitated Rexroth's spiel from a few weeks ago, almost to the letter. I got your psychovomit all over my keyboard. Ick. Sure, it has a lot of good points, but you/Rex are missing some things:
While Hopkins does have limitations to the amount of money we can use, it's more or less up to us to decide where to put said money. Like Erik said, a lot of it right now is being sent to the football program. Fiscally, that's understandable, because football (theoretically) makes money for the school district. But as far as I know, the little profit football actually makes is being funneled directly back into the program. Our operations money is being spent on football, the profits from which are shuttled into the "Bricks and Mortar" pot used to build new fields and such. It's almost like laundering money within the institution. I don't think the administration necessarily wants it this way, but it's how things are working now.
The result: an imbalanced spending routine. While AP tests lose subsidization, teachers have to scrounge for materials, the orchestra program's termination looms on the horizon, and art teachers have to charge students to take their classes, the school finds themselves with a lump of cash to spend only on renovations and technology. What do they do? They go out and buy two-score flat-panel iMacs. Now, as much as I love Macs, this from-the-hip purchase was completely unnecessary. The tech rooms get all these pretty computers, so that kids who take slacker classes in this wing of the building can check their email. Maybe 10% of the time (at most) they are being used to run Photoshop or iMovie - gasp! How processor-intensive! The school does not need these computers, especially when all they did was replace a bunch of still fairly adequate systems (but they weren't flat screened! flat screened!!!).
It's a similar story with the football field, auditorium, and cafeteria. While I'll be paying $450 to take my AP tests this year (and I know others who will be spending even more), I'm happy to know that the football team (that I never watch) will be able to play on their pro field (which I'll never use). Because of some glitch in the budget somewhere, the administration's priorities are being skirted.
So I propose a solution. Let's reverse the process. Instead of pumping funds into athletic and other non-educational budgets, lets take "Bricks and Mortar" dough and feed it into operations. Examples:
-All those computers combined are a complete waste of processing cycles. I would estimate that about 5% of their processing power is used by the half-retarded shop/tech kids. The school could run all of these computers as parallel processing nodes (there's even an OSX utility that allows this on Mac) and sell the processor cycles in this giant beowulf supercomputer to the highest bidder. Private companies, research institutions, even the US Government are always looking for cheap ways to crunch a lot of numbers. This technique has been tested in the marketplace and found successful.
-The auditorium and cafeteria about to be built can be rented out. People are always looking for large spaces in which to host trade shows, concerts, meetings, parties, lectures, seminars, etc. Why not capitalize on space that we don't use 100% of the time?
-Let's start trying to make profit with our "operations" resources. The bands, orchestra, and choirs charge for their concerts, but that money isn't given back to the programs, it's sent to a large lump fund. Each program should benefit from its own profits. This is only one small example; there must be other ways to make money on the "education" part of our educational institution. Ideas, anyone?
So it's not just a matter of adjusting priorities. The priorities are there: no teacher wants his/her program cut, the school's administrators (the majority of them, at least) must care about education first and foremost. The real problem is that there hasn't been enough motivation to change. As Paul said, we're still one of the most funded schools in the state; the administration hasn't yet seen what diminished operations will result in. There haven't been any significant movements/voicings by students, either, and barely any by members of the community. I don't think anybody is responsible for the fiscal errors that abound at Hopkins, but somebody needs to speak out loud enough in order to draw attention to their effects.
And in addition to that . . . will people stop bitching about the fireplace, it is only going to cost $5000 and if you know anything about how much stuff costs you would realize that that isn't very expensive. That $5000 can't be saved because of government laws and it can't be spent on anything productive because there isn't enough of it . . . so what the fuck lets just spend the money on a fire place. It will be fun to try and throw shit in there. Plus it might warm that fucking frozen tundra known as our school up a little!
While it's true that the Hopkins School District does seem to have a misguided sense of reality, it's important to remember a couple things...
1.) Where we stand and why we're here...
Hopkins, because of the success of the last referendum, has reached the state mandated maximum of how much it can spend on educating students, paying teachers, and funding classes. As a result it?s actually illegal for Hopkins to spend any more on education. In previous years, Hopkins was able to maintain its curriculum because of a community so devoted to supporting its schools, that other cash strapped school districts would probably kill for it. Case in Point: Hopkins voters have passed every referendum that the school district has asked for dramatically buffering the effect of budget cuts, while nearby districts like Osseo have been forced to drastic cuts to curriculum. Due to inflation, a shrinking tax base to draw from, and other sources, simply maintaining the level of education opportunity possible in recent years has become impossible.
2.) Why are we spending it the way we are...
State regulations divide each districts funding into two "pots," with a maximum limit set on both intended to equalize education opportunities. On the left you have education and on the right you have "bricks and mortar" (building maintenance). Because of state law, Hopkins is quickly running out of money in the education pot that the last referendum provided, while at the same time, the "bricks and mortar" pot is closer to full than ever. The reason that more isn't spent on education is because state law explicitly forbids the transferring of funds between the two pots. The results are the frivolous building projects that the school plans to undertake in the coming months/years. The only exception to this is the cafeteria. The current cafeteria is in violation of state regulations that dictate that for every student there must be X amount of space. Because the High School Student body continues to grow so rapidly, the cafeteria has to be remodeled or rebuilt regardless of whether the school wants to or not. The football field, the new auditorium, and the seemingly endless amounts of new computers to name a few are indeed examples of unnecessary spending. With regards to the AP tests, those we're supplemented solely by the state, not the district and were an early target of a state government eager to cut costs.
3.) Where are the priorities?
Schools have been forced to change their priorities from constantly improving the quality of their education to simply maintaining as much of their curriculum as possible. In Hopkins, the continued extent of Bricks and Mortar spending has been shifted to the forefront now that the district has no where to turn to keep educational programs; but seems to have more money than it knows what to do with to spend on building maintenance and/or improvement. Hopkins has reached the end of one of the longest leashes in the state of Minnesota and is beginning to feel the effects that other districts have been forced to deal with for years. Hopkins students have had it pretty good as far as education goes and despite the budget cuts will continue to enjoy a substantial advantage in opportunity compared to other schools. The bottom line, Hopkins is going to have to learn to learn with less money.
Question: Our school keeps cutting and cutting back academic materials and teachers. i.e. double the AP fees, loss of teachers, higher athletics fees, etc. Yet we throw money at a multi-million dollar frivolous artificial football field (I would know, I play football), and we have plans to build a huge auditorium and totally rennovate the cafeteria. Bottom line, we'll have HHS kids who are dumb as rocks, but they'll be well-fed rocks, who have nice chairs to sit in for the semi-annual school gatherings. I know money doesn't equal knowledge, but I ask you people, where are the priorities?? If we can build these great faucilities, but can't educate the kids to do anything but clean those faucilities, I see a downward spiral to doom in the near future.
-Erik Greene
Erik, that was a great argument. You are especially right that America must not be percieved as weak in the Arab world. Most of the protestors have no idea how diplomacy really works in the Middle East. I suggest everyone read From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman. It is not about Iraq, but the Lebanese Civil War, a conflict that ended 10 years ago. The book gives a great glimpse at the Middle Eastern mentality. In the middle east, force is respected, and weakness is taken advantage of. Another phrase I hear a lot is "inspectors work, war doesn't." Something a kin to this is posted at the school. What that phrase seems to be forgetting is without the threat of American and British force, those inspectors would never had gotten into the country in the first place. The Middle East is not Europe. Being pacifistic is suicide in that region.
