CHOIR

So, at my school our choir class is being cut, do to school budget cuts. I, simply won't stand for it. I have gone in and talked to the principal about it, we pretty much had a 45 minute discussion about him choosing to cut our choir class. He won't change his mind just from that meeting. I'm sending in an opinion paper to be put in the opinion column of our newspaper. Here is the paper I wrote.

School Budget cuts
Based on a recent article in the Moapa Valley Progress by Doctor Sam Moses characterizing the current reductions in school funding as a reduction is really a misrepresentation designed to garner public sympathy. The truth of the matter is that Clark County School district is being asked to live with a smaller budget increase of approximately fifty million over last year’s existing budget. In an economy where many are losing their jobs and homes, a fifty million dollar increase over last year’s spending does not rise to my definition of a crisis.
My opinion is first…More money spent on education does not always increase the quality of education. An example is, is that the state of Utah spends one thousand dollars per pupil less than the state of Nevada for education. At the same time Utah’s quality of education far surpasses Nevada in national rankings. On the other end of the spectrum Washington D.C. spends the most per student and is only ranked two spaces above Nevada in quality of education based on national rankings.
More important than the gross amount spent per student on education is where the money is spent. Clark County School district is installing GPS’ into school buses, they think nothing about spending twenty thousand dollars on landscaping we don’t need, and the school building designs are big and inefficient. Our school sends a full size school bus to Echo Bay six times a day to pick up somewhere around 30 kids. Also our school has just spent thousands of dollars painting a mural on the wall of a pirate ship and bought a whole new set of furniture to match…yes FURNITURE! Why do we need couches at school? We go to school to learn. We don’t even have a lunch time to go sit on the couches. The only logical time that we would actually have to spend sitting on those couches is during class time. This means we would be ditching class to sit on new couches the school just paid for. Is there any logic to that? At Moapa Valley High School the school district has approved tearing up and rebuilding the tennis courts, and replacing the fences in the baseball fields. What is the difference between playing on worn tennis courts compared to brand new courts, how many tennis and/or baseball professionals has Moapa Valley High School produced? What is more important the quality of our tennis courts, and our 4 foot fences, or the quality of our education?
Teachers deserve to be paid more. There is a saying “You get what you pay for.” Teachers should be paid based on merit, in essence teachers should be rewarded to excel. My understanding is that currently advanced degrees result in higher income. However, superior teaching skills if unaccompanied by an advanced degree result in no pay increase. So why should teachers try to do a better job? In my opinion this is a defect in the current compensation system that needs to be addressed if we are to improve the quality of our education.
The School district complains they need to make budget cuts, but in reality they need to prioritize where they spend their money based on obtaining the greatest educational opportunity for each dollar spent. In my opinion once they make providing the best education possible their number one priority and eliminate or reduce any spending that is not in line with the school our budget issues will resolve themselves and no longer be an issue.