If you can’t count, you don’t count.
Perhaps that‘s not literally true, but it’s clear that in the future, decent jobs will increasingly head for numerate cities. With the halving of school resources over the last few years, it looks like Raleigh wants to make quite sure that our kids “don’t count.” Defeating this brazen attack on our own and our kids’ future will need volunteer efforts over the long haul, not one-time flashes in the pan.
We need long-term stable income for the Asheville City Schools Foundation to offset the worsening state of textbooks and other resources and to fund in- and after-school programs
UNCA’s Asheville Initiative for Mathematics needs the resources to extend its existing Marvelous Math Club program.
There need to be more out-of-school programs supporting kids through the drudgery of math homework as well as the fun of math exploration.
Math-averse parents and grandparents need somewhere to find support so that they can be a positive, rather than a negative, influence on our students’ homework.
The city continues to fritter away precious resources on things like $3 million-a-mile greenways from nowhere to nowhere, so overcoming Raleigh’s malign neglect toward our future is a job for the rest of us. After all, neither tourists nor retirees can guarantee prosperity — they are transients with little or no incentive to care about our city’s future.
But as the man said: “Failure is not an option.” Otherwise, as Asheville sinks into another half-century-long slumber, your expensive home will become worthless, and your rent will grow far beyond your ability to pay.
— Geoff Kemmish
Asheville
Ooooohboy-
Cue the following far right/libertarian wacko vocab exercise:
gub’ment screwls
commies
elitist
overpaid teachers
Let’s try something:
Vote for those who support educational vouchers.
Then send your paranoiaspawn children to schools that feature textbooks
that teach creationsm (complete with drawings of children riding dinosaurs ala
the Creationism Musuem), call the Civil War the War of Northern Agression with no mention of the South’s ahem economy, call the Indians lazy, claim MLK was a paid crisis actor and then wonder why your kids move back in with you after getting knocked up by a neck tattooed guy named Colton or Trace.
Or we could just vote representatives into power in NC who support paying teachers a decent wage.
Wouldn’t it be nice if other educators posted here vs.
populist blind rage types? I know, there I go again.
School vouchers are a threat to establishment schools. Poorly run schools will suffer as will their staff if the money pie and the kids aren’t spread out evenly. The only way the government farce can go on is if everyone demands a piece. But the end result is poorly educated kids and overpaid teachers. And anyone with an ability to critically think would look at other systems across the country as an example of exceptionally paid teachers and failing kids.
First step should be to combine Asheville City Schools with Buncombe County. It’s ridiculous that taxpayers have to support both. Parents should also get off their lazy rear ends and be active in their children’s education. Not everything is learned at school. The smart kids get it at home as well.
Won’t happen yet. Merging the systems means that leftist lose their voting base. After all, if you actually do something to save money, how are you going to employ people with fat cat jobs and pensions to vote for you. You end up with a glut of extra people with no jobs to fill. Hence why there should be laws enacted that make government employees ineligible to vote. They merely vote for anyone that promises them more money. A huge conflict of interests.
That’s like an actually system that serves the gosh,….evil taxpayer. Not the tax taker.
Well Jason, unlike your pet “don’t drive your vehicle to the airport” project, your suggestion above does make a lot of sense, both points actually.