Home of Today's Common Sense

I read the Brownsville Herald on Sunday as I usually do and took note of the many advertisements portending the upcoming elections. Let us evaluate the Texas School Performance Review or “report card” given to the current crop of those who are representing us in the management of educating and motivating our children, -our BISD Trustees- .
* The report says there is too much administrative expense. Apparently, we may have been billed $40 million more than was necessary. In the effort to curb this problem consultants were hired by the Trustees to evaluate the report and recommend solutions that adds to the administrative expense. To get costs down BISD says they will freeze new teacher hiring’s and recruit a new Assistant Superintendent. When many classrooms have more than the optimum number of students BISD wants to reduce the number of teachers. Why not take some of the administrators and assign them to classrooms? I have been told that there are an overabundance of specialists and administrators at the BISD office. Granted some be needed to ensure that the bureaucracies are dealt with properly so that the various State and Federal program funding can be secured; but I have also been told of a specialist who was gone for an extended period and a replacement was not required to accomplish the job.
BISD should cease any tax increases until the administrative fund excess, of $40 million has been transferred to fund the needs of direct education. Teachers must now purchase many expendable supplies personally, just to get the job done. We now know why. It appears that there is a need to fund more patronage, than there is to educate our children.
I suggest that we all vote for trustees, who will *provide competitive salaries for the teachers. (Not just for the new recruits but for the dedicated experienced teachers that have not done very well of late), *reduce the costs of administration and use it to fund teachers, academic extracurricular activities and expendable supplies.
I also suggest that you look at each of the Political Ads and see what is most important and what that individual has actually accomplished. It is not enough to “support”, “vote for”, be “in favor of”, “feel something should be done”, “think something should be done”, “take something seriously”, and then think for yourself does what the candidate says he will do, agree with what that person has done in the past. Most important VOTE. If you don’t care who is responsible for the future of you children, how can you say you care?