I received these comments recently from a Sandwich parent who asked that his name not be published.
Local talk radio personality Ed Lambert spent Tuesday morning talking about the cost of back to school supply shopping and the seemingly endless list of needs and wants teachers are able to generate for cash-strapped parents.
In Sandwich, requests for pens, pencils, tissues, glue sticks, hand sanitizers, paper, crayons and more have already been sent home this week. Each year teachers also ask for supply help from each school’s PTA (Parent Teacher Association). Requests to these organizations include the purchase of books, computers, software and more.
This year’s school budget is almost $30 million (not counting grant moneys). You’d think that somewhere in a $30 million budget you’d find money for pencils, crayons, paper and maybe some tissues.
Either these aren’t really priority spend items or maybe the schools count on sucker parents to foot the bill for the basics even after paying their taxes. It’s the same sorry game for sports, music and theatre too – school administrators bang sucker parents another $150 per season for sports and extra curriculars on top of sky-high taxes.
So, how come parents are writing big checks and spending big bucks on tissues, pencils, paper, tubas and track?
Here’s the deal: School Department wages are growing at an astounding 5.5% on average and have for at least the last 8 years . The payroll is so large and grows so fast that there’s little to nothing left for supplies, maintenance and extra curriculars. The school department, including its teachers, has figured out that “concerned” Parents will pay one way or another; and that’s just what they make them do!
Ed Lambert and his radio legions shouldn’t be the only one talking about this mess and asking hard questions.
2 comments:
Parents are writing checks because they arent paying attention. Unless it impacts Pop Warner, or Soccer, nobody gives a damn!
Parents are being and will continue to be nickeled and dime-ed to death unless someone starts treating the situation and those involved differently. They (meaning the school system and the teachers/administrators) have us over a barrel. These are our children. The SC has always built this district on the backs of parents. They could do the hard political work of fighting for budget line items, creating appropriate budgets that don't just reward the teachers and staff but actually create a fair system, but they don't.
They kick the can down the road, beg for more from parents and from citizens, let fund-raising go wild and wonder why we never see the light at the end of the tunnel. Parents are being sold out by school leaders and the School Committee each and every year when it comes to accountability and responsibility. Parents always get the short end of the stick. The is no such reality in Sandwich as Best Practice. There is, "what is" until the powers that be, (SC and administration) find the will to change it. The dollars parents have to spend so their kid can have a normal school experience is unbelievable.
Yes, you would think that in a 30 million dollar budget there could be a line item for school supplies. But not when the politic of whine is order of the day. The schools can blame the town for not giving them enough money, the teachers can blame everyone because they only advocate for salary and benefits, the administrators will take anything they can get cause they have to keep the ball rolling, the parents can blame the SC and the town and in the end the problem never gets fixed. Families get stressed out because of all the extra cash they keep having to dish out and education often gets overlooked.
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