Mass school closures in Kansas City
Mass school closures approved in Kansas City, Mo.
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH (AP) – 38 minutes ago
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Facing potential bankruptcy, the board that governs the once flush-with-cash Kansas City school district is taking the unusual and contentious step of shuttering almost half its schools.
Administrators say the closures are necessary to keep the district from plowing through what little is left of the $2 billion it received as part of a groundbreaking desegregation case. The Kansas City school board narrowly approved the plan to close 29 out of 61 schools Wednesday night at a meeting packed with angry parents. The schools will close before the fall.
Although other districts nationwide are considering closures as the recession ravages their budgets, Kansas City's plan is striking. In rapidly shrinking Detroit, 29 schools closed before classes began this fall, but that still left the district with 172 schools. Most other districts are closing just one or two schools.
Continue: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5itXI7J7kJ7...
This post above me
is one of the strangest I've seen here.
It goes to some Turkish website, that has something to do with some kind of e-school?
Is this some sort of spam bot?
Strange..
http://www.ronpaulbrochure.com/
http://www.dailypaul.com/donate
Seems to be. The same post
Seems to be. The same post is now in the Old School AJ thread.
K-12 is Public Schooling at
K-12 is Public Schooling at home. You have no freedoms at all. The school is in control of your kids in your own home. Stay far far away from it. It's called GVA here... Georgia Virtual Academy. Huge thumbs down!
Anyone familiar with k12.com?
I heard an ad on Bill Bennet's radio show about http://www.k12.com and I was wondering if anyone had any info about it.
Also, what kind of emphasis on Liberty and basic American civics does http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com have? If we decide to Homeschool, I want the best program that teaches Liberty.
I would think using the same classics the founders learned from
would be a good curriculum.
We also have the advantage of the debates during the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution itself, the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, etc.
There are also the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, the writings of Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry's speech before the Virginia Convention, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, etc. etc. etc.
There is also Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig Von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, F.A. Hayek, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and other more modern writers.
Check out Laissez-Faire Books, as well as the Mises.org book store.
Robinson Curriculum includes much of those materials
There's a strong emphasis on reading original documents. However, my understanding of the Robinson Curriculum is that it's up to the parents to design the actual program around those documents; some parents have complained that there are too few guidelines about when to teach what, and how.
I have great respect for Arthur Robinson and the success he had with his children, who basically taught themselves after his wife died.
Liberty is taught through homeschooling when the children are given freedom to make key determinations about what they learn and how they learn. Children who are raised in a tightly-controlled, totalitarian environment don't know what freedom really is because they haven't experienced enough of it. It is more important for children to HAVE some freedom and independence than read about it.
Robinson on government
I don't have kids and haven't used this myself. I only heard about it from Gary North on the Lew Rockwell site. But I read much of the material on the Robinson site & it looks pretty good to me. Here is what Arthur Robinson has to say for himself, about teaching civics: http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/view/rc/s31p1004.htm
Recommended reading: The Most Dangerous Superstition, http://www.larkenrose.com/store/34-books/2019-the-most-dange...
Finally...
they've done something for the children!
Or, have they? Now they'll mash more of them together into tighter packed daily prison and reeducation camps...
I'd say if you can keep them home and teach them yourself, the do it.
Assert Your Authority
Educate your kids for $500
http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/?gclid=CJjgk5PfsaACFQVaago... That's $500 for a 12-year education, higher quality than you'll find in any government school. And you'll be doing your part to help starve the feeding educational bureaucrats. The government's usual tactic of cutting funding for programs the public actually uses in order to force through new taxes could backfire big time, if enough people find out about the alternatives to government schools.
Recommended reading: The Most Dangerous Superstition, http://www.larkenrose.com/store/34-books/2019-the-most-dange...
Where do you see $500? I see only $195 for the curriculum
And that is even better!
True, Homeschooling is NOT expensive. But there are opportunity costs. That is unless you discount the opportunity to teach your children your own values, and spending time with them among other things.
Total should be $816
If you add on the 9 Saxon Math books at $69 each. But you don't have to buy all those at once; your first grader won't need the books on calculus for at least a couple years. :)
Another nice thing about the Robinson program is that it doesn't require you or your spouse to become a full time teacher -- the kid works by himself, and you check over his work for about 20 minutes a day.
Recommended reading: The Most Dangerous Superstition, http://www.larkenrose.com/store/34-books/2019-the-most-dange...
wow. Kansas
may have a increase in over all IQ due to the abrupt home schooling practices that may take place.
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
-- Thomas Jefferson
The school district itself is
The school district itself is way overbuilt. The system has capacity for far more students than currently attend. These schools should have been closed long ago.
Drain the swamp!
I wonder if
they are planning on closing other bureacracies?
I notice that a common ploy of city commissions is to close the things that the general public sees of value(even if WE don't, the GP usually thinks schools are important), while leaving all manner of petty bureaucrats and tax-feeders employed to do more dirty work.
I remember a while back in the city where I lived, after a tax-referendum was defeated by vote, the city vindictively decided that ONLY the police and fire and emergency services would be shut down, and all other bureaucracies would continue as usual.
A clear vindictive move that was meant as a "punishment" so people would be bereft of any emergency services until the tax hike was put thru.
This is the kind of scum that inhabits these offices.
Not that I think public schools are anything to keep going, but you can see what the mind-set is like with these bureaucrats.
Their idea is "make it hurt", so they can yank more money out of the people's pockets,and not have to close down their pet programs or cut jobs of their cronies.
If nothing
else, this should wake up a few more people...
Berwick, Columbia County, Pennsylvania
Ron Paul 2012 - The People's Choice
rEVOLution SuperPAC: http://www.revolutionpac.com/
WTP Federal Lawsuit to BAN ALL ELECTRONIC VOTING
http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/UPDATE/Update2011-07-26...
This is the same old song and dance.
Not that there isn't waste in the school system there, or anywhere else, and not that we shouldn't get rid of government run indoctrination centers as a matter of principle, but this is more likely being "threatened" as a way to raise taxes and avoid making cuts where the SHOULD definitely be made.
Cities and States figured out long ago that if you "protect" everything but education funding then when the money runs out, you can claim you have to raise taxes or "education" will be cut.
It's a scam. Let them be cut and shut down. Maybe then we'll start having real learning going on for a change.
I think someone needs to research...
how much money they have in their local CAFR funds.
This is actually ONE occassion where CAFR "funds"
will be accessed. When they sell the schools, they will actually get the value listed in the report (or close to it at least). There are no CAFR "funds", only values. You only get value when you sell.
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I see..
now that would make sense.
I'm from missouri-
Wasn't it about 10-15 years ago when the Kansas City school board started opening up those "gifted" schools?
There is actually a much
There is actually a much larger story here. Kansas City's schools provide proof positive that throwing even more money at education does not improve performance. See http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-298.html to see what happens next.
Drain the swamp!
thanks
this is really a good read. A lot of lessons could be learned from this all over the world!
Napolitano: "We need Ron Paul now!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k3JNRTVI0Q
I think this is good. It
I think this is good. It should startle the crap out of a lot of people. Next thing they should close is all Federal institutions. Stop funding them with state money altogether.
"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that." — Alan Greenspan
Now if we could get the other 49 to follow suit we would
be off to a good start... Good riddance, close the propaganda machines.
The Liberty a society retains is inversely proportional to the number of Lawyers in the Government.
bump for that good thought
.