School Days In Recession

Last May the school district in which we live held an election to see if it could keep the mileage it had gotten passed years before. They pointed out that the computer technology they were using to teach with was at least eight years old. That’s an eon in computer generations.
They also said they needed to replace some fifteen year old furniture and to buy some new texts. They lost by 67 votes. With the reduced mileage, they went into major economy mode—some classrooms lacked the paper necessary to print enough spring exams.
Halls are darker. Teachers’ work stations in the faculty area have cut back on so many light bulbs it is honestly a bit hard to see if you are marking papers or reading. The award winning choirs are working with very old sheet music, madly erasing notations after each concert.
This past Tuesday the district set up the machines and called for a second vote on the same millage. It passed. A second proposal (new millage) for improving athletic fields and facilities went down to defeat. Hard pressed suburban parents were willing to keep what the schools had going—but drew the line at a dime of new money.
This is not an inner city district. This is a district that is proud of its schools, its musical organizations, its athletic teams. It was willing to put up millions little more than a decade ago to build an entire new high school building—with probably the finest theatre facilities in Western Michigan.
A few years after that, they built a brand new football stadium and turned the old one into a soccer field. Normally these people are willing to spend money on their school—a goodly percentage of their kids are college bound, lots of AP classes (which give college credit).
Now each teacher has a list of all the devices and lights (and window blinds) that must be shut down or turned off at the end of the day. This year they’ve reduced the miles run by school buses—crowds of kids walk to main intersections instead of being picked up in front of their houses.
(In case some of my fellow geezers have lost track, it has been deemed immoral and unconstitutional to make any child walk half-a-mile or so to get to school. I think we’re headed back to the distances we walked when we were kids. High gas prices, fewer drivers to pay … .)
(Obviously, when they consolidated districts like this in the 1960s and began busing students for miles each way, no one was imagining a day when we might no longer be able to afford all the buses, all the drivers and all the gas… .)
Another little economy—about four years ago the high school stopped offering Michigan’s mandatory driver’s training at a reduced rate. Now you take it from private instructors for about twice what the school used to charge—now, well over $300 dollars.
A number of kids are no longer driving at sixteen—making buses all that more necessary, since both parents often work. Mom and dad haven’t got the $300 for training. They make the kids wait until eighteen, when they no longer need to take the course. A necessary economy, but what does it do for driving safety?
Reports like the one that came out today—that unemployment has reached 10.2%--cannot make anyone feel that the day when money is no object in American education is liable to return any time soon. Faculty will go on turning out lights, kids will walk ever farther, and fewer and fewer kids will have a textbook available for them to take home and study.
It’s little facts like these that tell you the recession is still biting hard.