Ever wonder why there are no $ for education?
 

A friend of mine who teaches high school in California routinely buys books for some of his students because the district has no budget for new ones. Makes you wonder where all the cash goes.

Here's a couple of pictures which are testament to the power of the lobbyists working for the US military industrial complex. These planes are rotting away in Arizona. Sure there are planes dating back to the Korean war sitting out there but it really makes you wonder if the US is getting value for dollars spent.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688661.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688690.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688707.jpg http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688733.jpg

I remember seeing pix somewhere of various miliary planes being broken into pieces out into the open, as part of some arms reduction treaty.

Here we go:

http://www.dtra.mil/press_resources/...otos/os29l.jpg
http://www.dtra.mil/press_resources/...otos/os30l.jpg
http://www.dtra.mil/press_resources/...otos/os31l.jpg

Well, It could help to get some facts straight.

They store them in the AZ desert for a reason.

They store planes not in service that might be called into service and rip apart old planes that nobody uses. They also take parts that are no longer made from old planes and sell them to folks that need them.

Also they have a disarmament destruction schedule that during the 80s at least was monitored by the soviets via satellites. We monitored a similar program of theirs.

The conditions in the AZ desert are good for this storage as it preserves the aircraft better then the rust belt would.

And your friend the teacher in CA might consider that the reason the schools don't have the budget is because (at least in the district I worked in) more than 50% of the students couldn't pass a basic algerbra test and numbers similar would drop out before graduating high school. Attendance is poor and attendance is what money is dependant on.

The first part of the blame should likely go to the parents; but they are busy just trying to put food on the table.

There is an interesting series of articles in the LA times this week...point your friend to it maybe.

Davis-Monthon Air Force Base is the only US military installation that makes a profit.

Airplanes are preserved very well in the dry Arizona climate. Many are in mothballed condition, where they can be brought back to active service. And yes, that actually happens.

Truely obsolete aircraft are stripped of valuable parts, where they are sold to both military and civilian customers. I'd be curious to know how much scrap aluminum they sell every year.

My question for our Canadian friend, Jorian, is what would be a better system? For the US Air Force to continue using propellor-driven WWII era equipment, and never upgrade?

Good points, but one other reason schools don't have any money is that the nea uses it for everything but education. Instead of teaching reading, writing & math, they indoctrinate socialist beliefs, teach them that the government should take care of them and those who are successful are bad, take away from those who have. No where in the Constitution does it say that the Government is responsible for education, but the Government is responsible for protection of the USA. Look at not only how much money the nea used to lobby and what they spent it on, not educational either. The last governers election in FL, the nea MORGAGED their state headquarters fund a demacrook trial lawyer running for Governer.

About education spending-

There is almost a reverse corelation between spending and results. Some of our largest cities pay the most per student, and have the poorest graduation rates. Check out the stats for Washington DC. In the middle we have smaller rural districts that do far better on average, while spending far less per student. Then check out the graduation rates of private schools, who work on a small fraction per student compared to public schools.

Education and its funding is a complex issue. No easy answers. But just saying to throw more money at a problem is greatly oversimplifying what actually happens in the real world.

You would never treat a car like that :rolleyes:

It took the Californians this long to find the boneyard?? This site has been in existence for decades!!

I suppose our Californian and Canadian friends would prefer we sold all our old aircraft to private citizens in the middle east....

Get real.

Define "profit"?

Since I work in Federal Government accounting and finance, I am highly skeptical. While it may produce a postive return for that particular program in terms of recycling or some other "dollars in" activity, it likely doesn't makes a profit how the rest of the financial world thinks.

Just want to set the record straight for anyone on the board ready to get up in arms about it. (You know who you are!!)
SmileWavy

Incorrect.

Rural school kids live in relatively better conditions with less poverty than inner school kids.

The private schools get to choose the kids they want.

The amount my local public high school gets per kid is $7,679.
The private school my kids went to cost $10,405.

You obviously have never taught.

In california we have such a population of low income families whose parents are struggling just to make ends meet that they neglect their children's education. They don't spend the time with them on it which means that the children who don't have their own drive and ambition to do well and need that parental influence (like I did) will fail and their teachers become babysitters. There are kids out there with their own drive and ambition that regardless of their parents input will do well in school (my sister for example).

Anyway, in these cases it simply does not matter how much money you throw into education. Without parental support of a teachers efforts (and good teachers of course) the majority of low income children will likely fail.

The whole thing leads down to the amount of time a parent has to do just that and if they are both (or there is only one to begin with) working two jobs just to keep food on the table then it's very likely the time they are spending on their kids with their homework is a big fat goose egg.

When kids fail parents have failed as well. Here's a fantastic socialist idea that is put out blatantly to get the conservatives rile up. I myself wouldn't even sign on for it...but instead of spending the money in the classroom the money could be spent to help these parents out with their income so THEY can be parents.

If you can't afford to have kids - don't.

Well let's see...some time ago, OREGONIAN newspaper ran a front page story on why government worker retirement (including teachers) was such a drain on the state budget. The front page photo showed a "retired" teacher couple lounging by the pool of their retirement community in Sun City (I believe Arizona?) while enjoying their combined retirement pay of $110,000 per year. This did NOT include the medical benefits they are still entitled to until age 65 when Social Security takes over. He was 53, she 51, both had put in their 30 years, retired early. The chairman of our local school board told me that the average teacher cost to the taxpayers of Lebanon, Oregon is now above $70,000 per year. That's salary, combined with retirement, dental, vision, and medical insurance, paid by the taxpayers. These teachers will also retire at slightly above age 50, retirement on the taxpayers tab.
But definitely...it's those damned airplanes robbing the schools of needed funding!
:rolleyes:

My wife taught for a year in a rural school district (Mattoon, IL). The kids were poor, far poorer than their inner-city counterparts. They just don't get the same attention (or funding) because they are not as densely concentrated.

The biggest problem was that the parents didn't care about their children's educations. Very few homework assignments get done, and notes home to parents are unanswered, and parent-teacher conferences are unattended.

pwd72s, and your point is what? $70K is with all benefits, so real salary is ~$25K and you want to take away any pension benefits?


But I agree that the planes are not the issue at all.

Totally agree with second paragraph. And the interest of parents sometimes is not income related.

The rural kids I taught came from farms and ranches. They were realtively poor compared to the suburban kids, but there parents were not working nights or away from home as inner city parents do. To my mind the ranch kids are better off than the inner city poverty kids.

"A friend of mine who teaches high school in California routinely buys books for some of his students because the district has no budget for new ones. Makes you wonder where all the cash goes." per jorian

Looks like you have your budgets mixed up, CA can't buy books because they piss away money on other stupid things. It has nothing to do with mothballed planes that are 50 years old. (most of them) The Fed budget is not used for buying public school textbooks.

Being from Canada I suppose you would encourage the US Gov to sell these planes on the world market, maybe to Iran or North Korea so they could use them for passenger planes????? Then we could send that revenue out to CA to buy books for illegal aliens living in LA. Yeah, that the ticket.

When you pay taxes in the US, then you can have some say in how to spend our tax $$, until that time comes, please reserve the comments.

I can deal with critiicism coming from this side of the fence but not from outside of our borders.

The tuition at the private school my children attend is just under $3,600 per year. In the So. Cal public school district we are in the cost to "educate" on child is $7,600.

Contrary to popular belief, we do accept just about anyone who can pay (and some who don't) at any normal range of academic abilities. We have rich snops and poor folks, super high achievers and strugglers. We cannot offer everything a public school has to offer, but we try to accomodate the most amount of children the best we can. And our children become better studnets and better citizens than their public school counterparts.

The common denominator for these kids' success is parents who care and look after them attentivley. The children who succeed have parents that want the best for their children, and this cuts accross all socio-economic levels. Having to write that check every month makes for a real reality check when your kid says they don't want to study etc.

Conversley, taking the responsibilty for educating children away from the parents and putting it on the government has had horrible results. California at one time had the highest test results in the nation - now the public schools can't seem to spend enough money, our protperty taxes ar $7,500 per year, and the lids can't read.

Meanwhile, the CTA and the NEA just lobby for more money - or for stem cell research - or fighting Walmart - or sticking up for the Retail Clerks Union.

Public schools and the unions that support them MAKE ME SICK!

Re: Ever wonder why there are no $ for education?
 

You may have missed it, but once upon a time there was this thing called the "Cold War", where we thought we would go to war with the Soviet Union. Based on this we and our allies, built a big military with which to fight this war with a chance of winning. When the threat went away, all the hardware didn't go with it. It isn't just airplanes, we have a lot of warships in storage around the country as well. The silly thing about fighters, bombers and warships is they aren't really good for anything else.

You think we should put them on ebay, and use the cash to buy textbooks?

Let's see what we have here.....
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688661.jpg

OK, we have from left to right, F4s, which first flew in 1958 and the were only retired a few years ago, the Air force flew the last F4G "Wild Weasel" variants. Next are F-15s, which entered active service in 1976, and are still our primary air superiority fighter. My assumprion is these are "A" or early "C" models, or are simply the planes from fighter squadrons that were disbanded after the cold war. On the right are Navy F-14s, which entered the fleet in 1973, when the primary threat was assumed to be Soviet Bears/Backfires with cruise missiles. They are being replaced in Navy service by F/A-18s, which are more suited to current needs. On the far right are still more F-4s, not suprising, considering how many of them we built during the cold war.

.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688690.jpg

B-52s, first entered service in 1955, and is still in inventory. We built a ton of these during the cold war, and as was mentioned chop a lot of them up to comply with arms reduction treaties with the Soviets. Obviousely we don't need as many heavy bomber squadrons now as we did during the cold war.


.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688707.jpg

Hard to tell, but look like F-8s and/or A-7s, which served from 1955 to 1987, and 1964 to ~1992 respectively. Both are interesting planes in that the F8 was the last fighter built as a gun dogfighter, and the A7 was the first plane with a Heads-up display. I can't tell what the helos are.


. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138688733.jpg
More B-52s. See above.

So of the planes in these photos, the ones with the shortest service life is what, 28 years? Yeah, you are right, them lobbyists of the military industrial complex been earning their money, screwing over The Children (TM) .:rolleyes:

I don't buy the "makes a profit" bit either. "generates income" sure, but no way they are profitable. I suppose if you depreciate the cost of their "product" over 40 odd years, their cost could concievable reach zero, but I still don't buy it.

Here is the Google sattelite view:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=l&hl=en&q=Davis-Monthan+AFB&near=Tucson,AZ&t=k&ll=32.160064,-110.838232&spn=0.0505,0.080338&t=k

Tom

Info gleaned from the same school board chairman...over 90% of the Lebanon, OR Government schools budget goes to salary & benefits, including retired personnel. Benefits usually run 35% of a teacher's annual cost to the taxpayers. Living expenses vary from area to area of the USA. Somebody making $50K per year in pre-tax salary is firmly into this area's upper middle class, life style wise. When you take the ALL FUNDS state budget for government education in Oregon, divide it by the number of students, you come up at a cost level of $10,000 per student, per year. How much more do they want? Especially out of a community where most people are making $10 per hour or less?
It's time the myth of school teachers being underpaid gets exposed.

I went to law school in Tucson and drove by Davis Monthan daily. The stats that I heard were that IF Arizona were to secede from the United States, based upon the number of planes stored, it would have the second largest airforce in the world. Also heard that the planes could be returned to service in under one day if necessary. I'm not an aircraft mechanic, nor in the airforce, so take this with a grain of salt

JP

pwd72s,
Well you guys are well above CA at $7649 per student.
Can you post salaries from local district?

I did it for my local district in a different thread and they do not make that much in relation to my area.

Give them a book and they will each want their own computer at the State's / taxpayers' expense.

Fullerton School District sued for not providing all students with $1,500 computers.

As to the military planes, if you stop spending on those school will have no reason to have more than 1 or 2 books since the government will limit the books that may be used in school.

Am I missing something?

The article states Fullerton School District was threatened by a lawsuit for dictating that all parents must pay $1500 for the schools to provide a laptop for their child.

I don't see where the district was being asked to use taxpayer money to buy laptops for the students. Just that it was claimed to be unconstitutional for the school district to dictate that students must have laptops, and dictate that they buy the laptops through the district.

I don't see how laptops in schools are going to improve the quality of education in CA.

Cold war doesn't appear to be over....
 

Lobbyists are indeed, still hard at it. One could argue that they are at the top of their game as military and arms spending is the world's top form of spending.

Military spending in 2004 ($ Billions, and percent of total) Country Dollars (billions) Percentage of total

Figures are for latest year available, usually 2004. Expenditures are used in a few cases where official budgets are significantly lower than actual spending.
* 2003 Figure.
** Joined NATO in March 2004.
Source uses FY 2006 for US figure. 2004 used to try and keep in line with other countries listed.

Due to rounding, some percentages may appear as zero.

United States 399.1 43%
Russia* 65.2 7%
China* 56 6%
United Kingdom 49 5%
Japan 45.1 5%
France 40 4%
Germany 29.7 3%
Saudi Arabia 19.3 2%
India 19.1 2%
Italy 17.5 2%
South Korea 16.4 2%
Australia 1 1.7 1%
Turkey* 11.7 1%
Israel* 10.8 1%
Canada 10.1 1%
Spain* 9.9 1%
Brazil 9.2 1%
Netherlands 7.6 1%
Taiwan 7.5 1%
Greece* 7.2 1%
Indonesia* 6.4 1%
Sweden 5.9 1%
North Korea* 5.5 1%
Ukraine* 5.5 1%
Singapore 5 1%
Poland 4.4 0%
Norway 4.2 0%
Kuwait 4 0%
Iran 3.5 0%

Source: U.S. Military Spending vs. the World, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, February 7, 2005

The US figure does not seem to be a proportional response to whatever threats (real or imagined) exist. Rather it seems to be gradual buildup of legitimate need burdened by dubious programs, initiatives, pork barrelling and other military flavour-of-the-month nonsense.

"Yeah, you are right, them lobbyists of the military industrial complex been earning their money, screwing over The Children (TM) ."
- The pictures of the planes above are indeed old but you can't argue that current expeditures are at best questionable.

"As to the military planes, if you stop spending on those school will have no reason to have more than 1 or 2 books since the government will limit the books that may be used in school."
- Not sure what you are trying to say here, if we cut back to a reasonable (MY word) level of military spending we will suddenly be overrun by by jihadists or commies? Give me a break.

Our spending is disproportionate.

Why?

Whenever there is a problem, anywhere, the world expects the U.S. to take care of it.

BTW, I'm sure you would be much safer in B.C. if the U.S. reduced military spending.

BTW - the figures from my last post DON'T include budgets for Homeland Security or current Iraq and Afgan operations.

I heard about this on the local new. The link wasthe only article I could find.

The issueof state funded laptop computers is going to be basis for the suit. The ACLU is going to argue that children from low income families must be provided with their own laptop computer at the State's expense to have an equal education opportunity as those children whose parents can afford to purchase the laptops.

Just pile on the court-created entitlements.

They fix everything, everytime, like a charm.

Re: Cold war doesn't appear to be over....
 

What is questionable is the math used in coming up with those numbers. Here is a hint for you, the federal budget for 2004 was 2.2 Trillion dollars, so assuming their 399.1 number is correct, when they say 43% what they reallly mean is ~18%.

I guess those math skills prove your point about public education.......

Tom

Yup, Oregon as a whole, pays higher teacher salaries than California. WHOLE budget, federal, state, and local sources used to reach that $10,000 per student statewide figure. School systems are good at cooking the books to try to make per pupil spending less. I got my salary cost figures from the current board chairman of the Lebanon, Oregon school district. His name Rick Alexander, a proponent of charter schools. The local superintendent doesn't like him. He does terrible things in the Super's opinion...like walking unannounced into the head offices and asking to see ALL the checks written that day. In the eyes of the educationalist establishment here, Rick is bad news. You see, he answers questions directly & honestly when a taxpayer asks, and if he doesn't know, he finds out. Can you imagine this? He even went to the Linn County D.A., who then ordered that the Superintendent open ALL financial records to Rick or be prepared to suffer legal action. It's been quite a tempest in a teapot here since Rick got elected...with well over 60% of the vote. Voters here were obviously getting tired of "biz as usual".

The fed. gov't. provides a whopping 7% of the money spent on public schools in the US and I think that's 100% too much. Can anyone in the US say schools have gotten better here since the creation of the Dept. of Education? It was created by Jimmy Carter as a payback to the NEA for their support for him in the '76 election. State and local, not federal, government is responsible for public schools. Defense spending has NOTHING to do with it, other than keep us and much of the rest of the world free to learn or continue to be ignorant. If it weren't for US military spending, we'd be speaking Russian now.

The avg. private school in DC costs $4k per pupil per year. The city spends $10k per pupil per year and has the WORST schools in the country with above 50% dropout rates. Clearly, money is not the problem here.

Plenty of the countries low on that list of military spending are there because the US covers their a$ses. Ditto for Canada. Canada can spend all it wants on "free" healthcare and schools because it knows damn well the US would never ever let anyone touch its northern neighbor.

"What is questionable is the math used in coming up with those numbers. Here is a hint for you, the federal budget for 2004 was 2.2 Trillion dollars, so assuming their 399.1 number is correct, when they say 43% what they reallly mean is ~18%"

The 43% relates to the WORLD'S spending not the US budget. Have a look at the post before you get smart. Or don't - I got your back anyway.;)

Actually, it seems to be the total of the top 55 spenders, making it possibly the least meaningfull statistic ever created, disguised as something relevant. May as well be the average number of buttermilk pancakes required to shingle a doghouse.

Excellent use of Obfuscation though. It is interesting that the source they cited, only has the numbers, not the percentages, and they don't make it clear what "Percentage of total" refers to. Total what? The table heading "Military spending in 2004 ($ Billions, and percent of total)" implies percent of total budget spent on military. It is also interesting that you chose not to show the entire chart, I assume you got it here:
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp?p=1

The "globalissues" version includes such military powerhouses as Luxembourg and Estonia. After all, their military needs must be comperable to that of the USA. :rolleyes:

Why not link something meaningfull, like military spending as a percentage of GDP? Oh, yeah, that doesn't really support their thesis......

Here is the readers digest version of that link:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1138760682.jpg

The United States, with defense spending at 3.3% of GDP in 2002 would come in at #47 on this chart. Canada spent 1.1% the same year.

From the same report, we can find spending for 169 countries for 1999 and 2002, the percentages are close to 33% and 39% of world spending respectively (which is still a meaningless statistic).

Tom

It's okay Jorian...we realize that liberals don't think, they feel . Meaning you don't really crunch numbers or gauge performance using numbers...If it feels good to say, you just say it...the facts don't really matter.

It's OK boys...we realize neocons don't think or feel. Meaning when confronted with unpleasant facts they attack the science and the scientists or economics and the economists....spin to win. I guess all the planes in the desert is a good thing.

Such as?

"Such as?"

Military waste, global warming, illegal govt wiretaps.... take your pick. Lots to defend there. Also the beginning of this thread - the low priority of public education.