Read a Pacific Northwest, liberal perspective on world, national, and local politics. From majestic Redmond, Washington - the Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Contemplating Washington schools

My daughters' elementary school of about 500 kids in Texas had two school counselors, a full-time nurse, two P.E. teachers, an art teacher and a vice principal. Ditto for the schools they attended in Massachusetts.

The elementary school one of my daughters attends now in Redmond doesn’t have most of those professionals. It also has about 500 students, but no art teacher; instead, parent volunteers lead monthly art lessons. There’s no vice principal--I guess the kids never misbehave. There’s only one P.E. teacher, not two, one part-time counselor, not two, and a third of a nurse. The nurse is actually a whole person but we only get her a third of the time. The problem is, accidents and illness don't happen every third day and parent volunteers in the "health room" aren't qualified to treat a broken leg or a severe allergic reaction.

This, to me, is a tragic accident or lawsuit waiting to happen.

Despite this, our schools are better than many in Washington. Imagine my friend’s school in North Bend with 42 students stuffed into a 7th grade algebra class. Forty two! That's no way to learn.

Today I’ll be joining a group of about 500 PTA parents from across the state to make a statement in Olympia. Our noon rally in front of the Capitol building will be for one thing—to ask the legislature to make this the year of education reform. Our kids deserve better, and they keep growing while leaders keep stalling on doing what’s right.

Schools need more money. More money equals more teachers, nurses and counselors and it means that kids can go to school a little longer each day like my kids did when we lived in Texas and Massachusetts.

But more money is just the start. This winter, the legislature’s Basic Education Finance Joint Task Force came up with a lot of smart ideas about how to improve the current system, but stakeholder disagreement sacked their proposals. Fortunately, legislators aren’t giving up and are betting on a new set of bills, House Bill 2261 and Senate Bill 6048, to forge a meaningful compromise.

There are a lot of kids’ futures riding on these bills and the PTA is not going to let lawmakers forget it.

I love living in Washington and I don’t want to regret moving here. We also love our schools but we know what we are missing--our kids are getting short-changed.

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