Pecuniary strangulation

That’s a fancy term for “broke.”

Worse than being broke though, is not knowing how you can spend your money or even how much you’ve got.

Right now, because the state legislature has yet to pass a budget, that’s the situation each and every school district finds itself in.

Worse yet, there are possibilities. One version of the budget, the House version, cuts out two instructional days. Administrators don’t know if that will become reality, but they have to plan that it will. Teachers will get that much less pay. Students will get that much less instruction. The state saves $30 million or so.

Read tomorrow’s paper for more info about it. I definitely did not enjoy talking to administrators about this, because it’s never fun talking about how you’re going to do more with less.

Coming up

Here’s a couple bits I lifted out of a story I submitted today to run some time this weekend…

The four goals are listed as student achievement, student involvement, parent and community involvement and professional growth and development for faculty and staff.

“If you have the structure and overriding plan of what you want to accomplish as a district, you don’t want your goals to be changing from year to year, where you’re shooting at different targets all the time,” said Superintendent Tom Shelton. “The goal was to develop four goals that could be based on continuous improvement. From these we would establish baseline numbers to base our planning process, with the intent of having annual continuing improvement for each of these goals.”

This story has to do with the goals that the Daviess County Public Schools board passed on Thursday night at their monthly meeting. Read more about it when my story comes out in the paper to see how these goals will work, what they are and how they’ll be put into effect.

Earth Day

In just a little bit, I’ll be heading out to Tamarack Elementary School, where the students are putting a pretty ambitious project into effect as part of their observation of Earth Day.

Among their activities, the students will be planting flowers and helping put together a sensory garden that can be enjoyed by all. I’d like to tell you a little more about it, but I have to go see it first.

In the meantime, have a read about going green at the college level.

Click!

What’s the right incentive?

Mind you, I’m all for encouraging kids to read, learn and expand their minds. However, I think that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do that encouraging.

Now, a younger version of me would probably have hopped the nearest time machine, jetted into the future and is about to punch me right in the face for saying this, but I don’t think handing cash to students for achieving is the best way to encourage learning.

My number one problem is this: The money has better uses. Two, I think it sends the wrong message. But that’s just me.

Here’s an article I read that has to do with this very topic. Read and let me know what you think.

a preview of things to come

For the past few days I’ve been researching and trying to chase down a story. With a little luck today, I’ll pull it off.

The story is about charter schools and Kentucky’s renewal of the debate over whether or not they should be used in our state.

According to the Web site uscharterschools.org, Kentucky is one of 10 states that still have no legislation with regard to charter schools.

Here’s an excellent post from Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday on his blog, talking about why Kentucky is looking at charter schools now.

Race to the Top skepticism?

Kentucky was one of the 16 finalists for Race to the Top funding, a first cut at a piece of a $4.35 billion dollar pie that was slated for education out of the stimulus, or the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

But only two states, Delaware and Tennessee, were awarded first dibs. That went and made plenty of people not only upset, but skeptical about the doling out of this money, despite the fact that a second shot has been promised in the coming months. Mind you, that negative turn of emotions is largely probably due to the fact that states can’t ask for as much money in the second round as they did at first. For Kentucky, $200 million was what was hoped for at first, but now the state can only get $175 million at most, and that’s vital money to making the reforms mandated by 2008′s Senate Bill 1 out of the Kentucky legislature.

Read more here in the New York Times article that I found.

Yet another post about how expensive college isn’t

Wait, what?

That’s right. If you pick your school right (and can get in), there are a few schools out there that will give an education, put a student to work (not too hard, mind you) and do it all for absolutely nothing.

Don’t believe me? One of them happens to be in Kentucky. None other than Berea College in Berea, Ky.

Anyway, these colleges are somehow able to pull this off, but the tide is turning against them and at least one of these schools is giving up on the current arrangement and will start charging students soon.

Read more about this breed of institution and the difficulties they face here.

Another article on the cost of higher education

Here’s yet another article on the cost of education. This one, however, talks about what I think is a legit problem in higher education. I myself can clearly remember when I was in college and the University of Kentucky saw year after year after year of double-digit percentage tuition cost increases, which made a college education just too expensive to afford.

Click here to read the article.

What are your thoughts? What can be done about this problem, or is it even a problem?

You can almost hear the cash drawer clang open

One of the biggest problems on the mind of those interested in higher education, whether it’s for themselves or for their children, is the cost.

Higher education certainly isn’t getting any less expensive, and that’s a huge barrier to a lot of those who want to go to college.

Here’s a pair of articles that deal with the issue of cost. Enjoy.

Is an Ivy League education worth the price? – via the Christian Science Monitor

The iPad in education: Colleges give iPads to all incoming students – via readwriteweb.com

Me personally, I think there’s plenty that could be done with dollars than to spend them in iPads and fancy laptops. But that’s just me. I went to an underfunded public college. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.