Is it ever going to be enough?

Sometimes I arrive early to my math class and watch the previous class' teacher answer individual questions after his lecture. Today he asked me what my class was covering. He was concerned to learn we were further behind than his class.

so you know i'm not dead

in my city of north miami beach, and actually down the street from me, a new charter school will go.
I could look it up now to make the argument seem reasonable, but instead try this on for size.

Have you heard about the charter schools in dade county being closed down due to inability to turn a profit?
Many details are lacking here, with no clear explanation of who will pay to build the school, it seems that the City of Now More Beautiful will only donate land for the project? Who knows, thanks for trying herald!

Other curiosities:
what sort of presentation did Mater Academy make to the council? How long has the council and the Academy been in dealings over this issue?
Is Mater Academy only operating the school? Who is funding its construction? and then afterwards?

From my understanding charter schools use government money, but run their schools like businesses instead of monopolies. Or that's the fantasy of it.

What's a charter school? Who knows!

Roundup

Fallen behind on my duties, so I'll link spam today with commentary.

This isn't the first time FPL has been in the news of late. Their in wait for an approval of a rate increases amounting to over one billion dollars. Or else they'll have layoffs and cancel programs. Not that I support FPL, but why don't they try to set it up so that rates would increase incrementally over time, rather than in noticeable jumps every once in a while?

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A woman in Boynton Beach (from the AP) hit two girls, kills one. I wonder if she was charged more or less harsh than a girl who recently received sentencing on a similar hit and run.

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Spanish language production company Univision is opening a studio in Miami. I generally don't like spanish language television content, so I won't hold my breath on how this venture turns out, but it would be nice if they produced some documentary material about the lives of latin americans in Miami.

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Another AP story, this one about a bill in the State Congress attempting to fund Tri-Rail to vie for Federal stimulus money. Is there a trend with the AP having the best local news?

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Massive Medicaire fraud.

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Superficial AP piece about cuts in school funding in the State. Interesting fact claiming families are leaving florida at a faster rate than they're coming. No link or cite. And estimates that private school kids will flock to public schools, who now have less money.

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First local piece of the night, Rothstein's relationship with Broward police.

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Profile of a struggling single mother. I didn't read the whole thing.

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Very weak and hollow piece about a petition to recall County Mayor Alvarez. No real explanation as to why Mr. Gonzalez is intent on recalling the Mayor. What are his Grievances? They even bother to have the Mayor's spokeswoman defend him, despite a lack of charges.

Do our schools need more money?

A few articles appeared in the last few days from the Herald regarding Florida School's need for more funding.

The first article is about a lawsuit telling Florida it doesn't spend enough on education, violating its constitution. The second article is also about a lawsuit telling Florida it doesn't spend enough on education.

Or at least that's what the Herald makes it sound.

Although

"This suit simply asks the question: 'Do we have high quality education in this state today?' and asks the court to answer that question," said former Florida House Speaker Jon Mills, who is part of the plaintiffs' legal team. (second article)

I get the feeling from the articles that the focus of the suits will be funding, as the herald notes in the first article, the Legislature is relentlessly shifting a bigger share of education funding to school districts, lowering the state's contribution from 62 percent in 2001 to 45 percent this year.

But as I think anyone who has either graduated from the Florida school system, or has/d a child in it, funding is the least of the problems. Incompetence and inefficiencies abound in most schools, and it's a problem that I doubt these suits will address.

Teachers unions, for instance, constantly protect bad teachers, and rarely (if ever?) address that issue in public. It seems every year here in Miami-Dade stampedes of teachers descend on the School Board building to demand better pay, perhaps it's time for students and parents to hold similar rallies demanding better teachers?

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There's a third article that popped up this morning that addresses a possible bid by Florida to request as much as one billion dollars in educational grant money from the federal government. Again with the assumption by all parties that the problem is money.