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Now, now, this isn't American bashing. However, I do have a very large complaint that I'll share with you. My school board is made up of idiots. Pure and simple. Let me enlighten you on my school district's grand circumstances currently.

Last Friday the entire support staff went on strike because the school board refuses to sign contracts guaranteeing that they'll have jobs for the next few years. So, that means no lunch ladies, janitors, etc. The bus drivers have hung around, but if they went on strike then my school district would be closed for a few days at the very least. Why have they not signed contracts? It's because we have no money. However, this is easily solved. My superintendant, who is actually a pretty intelligent man, has proposed *gasps* a small budget increase. But, the school board wants a 0% increase. It takes little more than a quick glance at the dire straits of my school district to see that that is not possible. With a 0% increase it is estimated that we would have to cut the positions of most aides and foreign language teachers. We actually have a paper deficit because we can't afford anymore. For chrissake, my school doesn't even have tissues. Now, the proposed increase is a whopping 3.2%. Yet the school board is whining about it. It seems that everyone hates them because right now my school district is very damn poor, but the people living in the district aren't. Elections are coming up next fall, and my high school administration is urging parents to go out and vote. That's how bad it is, that the teachers themselves are telling us to get our parents to vote for a new school board. This is just infuriating me, and I have to put up with my school for another two years.

Cudos to striking people. Things need to change.

And if I were you, I wouldn't be complaining. Most college and university students in Quebec prov. have been on strike for 3, 4 or even 5 weeks in some cases now. Which means? No school. At all.

What's next? Teacher's strike comming. W/e...

Your story sounds a lot like my school. It is really poor. We have to pay like 180 $ a year to play a highschool sport. we almost didnt have freshman sports this year but we had fundraisers to get the money...

Why? Why pay for football? Not even one in a thousand of the people who try to make it into the NFL do. Why waste the money on something that eventually will just go to waste?

If you have to pay for the sport you play at your high school, all it means is the high school doesn't support that sport. That means your playing a club sport. Mercer Island lacrosse is a club sport and we have to pay like $300 just to play. My team is considered Mercer Island High School Varisty team, but the high school doesn't fund the sport. Its weird. Oh ya I must be in a good place in the country cause my high school is awesome. We have a radio station (X104) but a company is buying the rights to 104 and will soon over power our little signal and theres nothing we can do about it . I consider my high school like a small college becuase we have a stadium that can seat over 4,500 people, 5 full football size fields. 12 tennis courts spread out around the school. A track. 3 Basket ball gyms. A Theater for the arts. A large commons. And the list goes on and ON. I feel sorry for you guys, tell your parents to move to mercer island and then you will have a nice school!

We have to pay close to $12,000 p.a. so that I can go to the school/college that I go to.



They make up for it with the teaching quality. The teachers know their subjects really well and they all went to Oxford or Cambridge University etc.

I live in Alaska, we don't pay taxes, so basically our schools get funded by the oil revenue. Our teachers keep telling us that we are very lucky to live up here, but I think its all a hoax. We have average schools. The coolest parts is that we get yearly dividends.

My school got a huge grant...like the whole district did from taxes. It was amazing how much we got.
The school I go to built a new gym and upgraded a bunch of PE stuff...
...and cut the fine arts out.

I may be a bit biased, but...a guy went into our bandroom and took inventory of it. He said that the acoustics are so bad it could contribute to going deaf. I wish I remembered the exact readings...over 3000 bucks in damage on average is done to school instruments every year; students who borrow school instruments pay a flat fee of 25 bucks. It's been working pretty well...but our instruments suck, out of use. So, we made a big deal about it and we're getting new band uniforms. Suddenly they 'lost' that money. My band teacher 'found' it again.

it all really sucks...

Dear Gods, it's the apocolypse!

I'm glad I'm not going to that school. Mine is poor also. Our budget froze.

I just read an article in the paper with some fellow living in my school district asking for the school board to cut taxes. If only he knew of the conditions...

Hmm, I don't seem to have that kind of problem at our school. We have a good deal of competent teachers (though a few just plain suck because they can't teach, but oh well, I get high marks from 'em anyways). You can't go on strike because it's a private school. Heck, half the janitors are from the same family. We built a new multi-million theater from donations alone, with state of the art computer controlled lighting, sounds, and stuff like that. We get to watch movies in it 8)!

Yes, we have to pay for everything. But almost everybody's parents are really well off, and we have excess of almost everything. 4 computers labs in the school that can comfortably seat a whole class. A brand new Mac lab on top of that. A computer and projector in almost all classrooms. 4 Smartboards (they aren't actually THAT useful though IMHO). A huge sports complex which also costed us a few million dollars. Once again funded by lots of donations. Most of this stuff is from donations. Our budget is one of the lowest among private schools in our area.

So I guess it boils down to who attends the school and how much money the parents have. The lack of actual budget means that some of us are quite screwed, like our machine shop. Not a single machine cuts straight or accurate. EVERY major piece of machinery was donated, and they haven't been even serviced or calibrated in 3 years. Luckily, we might get one guy to come in to look at the machines.

So I got pretty lucky in terms of landing in a good school. Though the tuition is quite high, though luckily, my parents can manage.

Sounds more like my school, even though I'm not in US, it still happens. Our school, we pay a little over 740 (Which is like..$500 in US..Sounds weird but still..) and well, that's for the whole year, and for sports.. It's more. Like a history trip to Europe is like $3000 here ($2000 there..I would think), a trip to Japan is also that price. Along with that are other smaller fees which are ridiculous..I mean, can't the school PAY for your exam papers? We actually pay for our own exam papers..

Pfft, do you dare complain. My tuition is 5 digits. Don't know the exact amount though.

Oh a related note, take a look at this article/essay:

http://www.comclub.org/~quentins/whynerdsareunpop

And whats this have to do with americans?

Read my first post.

Theres a school district near mine that is in complete chaos, Superintendents stealing money which is now under investigation by 5 agencies, sexual assualts, their cafateria failed an inspection 6 times, 20 laptop computers were stolen, and they fired the head of one of their boards, which is NOT suppose to happen considering how deep they are in and now Board members are starting to resiging.

Also another school district, Carrol, supposedly they have the best Football team in the US (Carrol Dragons), are in debt i think 28 million because they put all their money towards their football team, and their teachers are the lowest paid in the area.

They're all screwed....

Hmm.

Thats rough stuff..

My old school was a tech school, unfortunately I got transferred, place was a hell hole anyways.

New school, is well poor, BUT they are managing extremely well, and the commons, although some what small... compared to my old school, has pwnage lunch food, like Papa John's, this weird Cambell's Soup dispenser.. lmao, all kinds of drinks, but the only difference from my old school, besides that they know how to teach, is they don't have like 10 tech classes... my old school had nearly 40..

Btw, when I said Tech school, I just meant a lot of tech classes, -.-
In fact,
they had a ton of classes :\ didn't really want to transfer but, oh well nothing I can do now.

The problem with my school district is it spends too much money on sports, which could support itself, and too little money on academics, which cannot support itself. I think we need to get rid of the people who are payed lots of money that only sign one piece of paper a day.

Sports-> OK to some, but I hate, highly overpaid

Academics-> OK to very few, but I like, highly underpaid

Our school board absolutely urges for more budget just because they CANNOT spend the money wisely, I am still wondering how we manage to have a pretty good school system.

Sports are extra-curricular activities, and they should be self-sustaining. That brings up a good point. The school could still pay for maintenance of the fields and facilities, but the teams could fund themselves for equipment, training, etc. And on top of that, coaches are paid for coaching? I find that preposterous. Instead, we could slightly increase teacher wages and do away with the coach wages. They should do sports because they love those sports, not because of an allure of money. I don't remember if I sad this, but I found a way for my school district to save $90,000 each year. Of course, instead of buying new equipment, they're going to cut taxes by $90,000. Off the top of my head... that might be $25 a person. I hate my school district. If I didn't only have two more years to go, I'd go elsewhere.

Ever hear of sports injuries? I'm pretty sure they've got way more money than you'd ever think of being factored into medical expenses and insurance for team members.

Our sports don't get many sports accidents. Football sucks (must be from the Vikes), basketball sucks (Timberpups?), maybe the only good one is hockey.

They need better schools systems for:

• The number of morons in schools are rising
• The fights are getting out of control
• And teachers never understand the students
• Oh, yes, the education isn't horrible, but it isn't the best

I would love school if it weren't for the freaking morons.

The problem is teachers aren't allowed to give as much discipline as they could in the past. Kid of out line? Earlier times, smack him with a ruler. Today, child abuse. Or, they hit some kid with some sort of disease and it gives him a serious injury, or beat the crap out of him, either way, some minority case makes it wrong for everyone. Crap gets blown out of proportions. Undisciplined kids are taught no respect, thus they can basically run the classrooms and the teachers are powerless to stop them. I'm saying teachers should beat their students, I'm just saying it would definitely be effective.

In my school, people can get detention for disrespect to a teacher, so, thats what may be keeping them in line, if they are.

Hey everyone, don't get off topic, this post is supposed to be about americans being idiots. I don't think it's americans, just people in general.
I don't know much about how my school district is going money-wise but I've heard one really bad story. Someone high up in the school district got a new position above where they were. Instead of moving furniture to the new office, they just bought all new furniture with the district's money.
In my opinion, anyone who doesn't want to learn anything or behave decently in school should get kicked out. If they want to come back, they should be put on a parole sort of thing where if they screw up a few times, they are out for good.