As a former Public School, Community College and University Administrator(Advisor/Director and Dean of Admissions & Student Services, Vice President of Instruction and Student Services and Interim President and State Community College Business Education Specialist), I must warn you that the State of Utah should face legal liability for any further leanings and actions of improper involvement of the Church of JC/LDS in gerrymandering public education and public school funds for vouchers and other elitist strategies.
I have visited numerous public and private colleges, high schools and elementary schools in Oregon and Idaho. I moved to Riverton, Utah to retire and get active in public affairs. I have seen firsthand, in multiple schools and classrooms these voucher-infused and/or "Alternative Schools" the racism, class-ism, protected status of Mormons with Seminaries on school grounds and their attempts, many successful, to have fewer disabled students, fewer, (often if any) Hispanic and Black students, catering almost exclusively to white, rich students from homes with two or more vehicles for transporting and/or high or double incomes. Why in the heck do you think these Utah students "of color" continue to do poorly on the Utah State tests of accomplishment?
The public schools must be the only recipients of tax dollars as they are in a steep decline; with many very good committed teachers who leave due to No Child Left Behind as do many students (up to 1/3rd) like in Texas where Bush was governor), who are "counseled out" of public high schools to raise school test scores.
The founding fathers (and mothers) of our country, (no, not Utah) determined that Public Education was necessary and for the public good (as determined by our Protestant predecessors who wanted to be free of brain-washing, enabled to think individually and act for their own and the public good, (not for the private over-arching tyranny of church/government coffers and intertwinings of Europe). They thought it was very, very necessary that there be "a free and appropriate public education" to clear and teach minds and focus thought and actions for the success of the then relatively new concept of democratic government.
The public high schools now cater to the rich white students (in Utah bent on overpopulation and biosphere pollution), by offering more and more Advanced Placement courses (which they can turn into college credits by 3 different cheap methods) and "Leadership" courses (often with 20 or fewer students so they get lower student/teacher ratios and more "college counseling" (note: that term is not "post-secondary" counseling emphasizing community colleges and Vocational-Technical training institutes for the majority!!!).
These vouchers are part of a movement to counter rising college and university tuition fees to get basic college general education courses (up to 2 years) taken by predominantly white, (especially in Utah), rich, college educated school board members own kids (who often get "selected") and who take advantage of the systems they knowingly set up! Remember too that it is much to a college/universities budget advantage to bring in the richest high achieving students from both inside and outside the US - so our public school attendees are competing with elitist, often private and/or religious educated aliens/foreigners for limited spots for college and university education opportunities!
These college students are not only from the U.S., Mexico and Canada; this is the education and employment coveted by Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, England, Germany (euro$ anyone) and many others from around the world.
Later, as graduates, these former alien students go home, or stay in the U.S. to compete with our citizens for jobs and our corporations and who later lower the value of the American dollar against foreign currencies and "adapt" or steal our technologies.
They financially seduce our best-of-the-best graduates to go abroad for employment and often to teach, or administer sweat shop corporations and child telemarketers in countries that don't share our humanistic values, benefits, etc.
It is time to say NO to these sneaky vouchers and elitist education tactics and reinvest in our public education schools, teachers and counselors.
We must redirect and strategically utilize and conserve our public school, college and university funds holistically. These efforts could save the breaking backbone of our country: the middle working class. If we don't, our future will be written off as the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the Caliphates of the old Arab world.
We are, and will continue, to decline from within and abroad due to our current catastrophic investments (1.5 trillion $ to date) in subjugationist holy wars of "nation-building" as advised by Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, Gen. Michael Hayden, Orrin Hatch, etc. Will they stay on if Mitt Romney is elected? Hope not.
How do you think it will bode for our Senior Citizens, Social Security and Medicare, since they are already under attack by the imbecilic and corrupt Bush Administration?
Illegal immigrants are a huge cost to our public education system, tying up billions of dollars in time, classrooms, teachers, counselors, etc. let alone costing other huge sums in roads & repairs, diminishing U.S. gas availability which raises prices, contributes to pollution and they comprise very disproportionately large percentages of prison/jail populations, drive up housing costs, drive down wages. Yes some do contribute minimal taxes.
Senior Citizens are now competing for the scarcer and scarcer public dollars as our nation grows weaker and weaker due to war costs nationally, elitist "vouchers", overcrowded schools and other reverse Robin Hood education strategies locally.
The "Greatest Generation" (who went through the Great Depression and fought WW2 & Korea) and their oft selfish baby-boomer offspring now retiring, and their more often selfish grandchildren might well be forced to take it out on the public schools at the ballot box in their own economic survival self-interests at the local level. That is cutting off our nose to spite our face now and in the very near future.
Please see beyond your own self-interest philosophy and State Republican Party dogma and vote against vouchers!
Have a bigger vision of the intersections of opportunity for investment in our public school children and the impact on our nation. Focus on the future of public education for legitimate citizens not illegal’s and / or their anchor-babies; then there will be funds to return our public schools to greatness in the classroom and counseling offices for all, not just on the football and soccer fields and basketball courts.
The price of civilization is taxation for equal, not elitist, education. Vote NO on vouchers.
Scott Shaw, Riverton, UT
I have visited numerous public and private colleges, high schools and elementary schools in Oregon and Idaho. I moved to Riverton, Utah to retire and get active in public affairs. I have seen firsthand, in multiple schools and classrooms these voucher-infused and/or "Alternative Schools" the racism, class-ism, protected status of Mormons with Seminaries on school grounds and their attempts, many successful, to have fewer disabled students, fewer, (often if any) Hispanic and Black students, catering almost exclusively to white, rich students from homes with two or more vehicles for transporting and/or high or double incomes. Why in the heck do you think these Utah students "of color" continue to do poorly on the Utah State tests of accomplishment?
The public schools must be the only recipients of tax dollars as they are in a steep decline; with many very good committed teachers who leave due to No Child Left Behind as do many students (up to 1/3rd) like in Texas where Bush was governor), who are "counseled out" of public high schools to raise school test scores.
The founding fathers (and mothers) of our country, (no, not Utah) determined that Public Education was necessary and for the public good (as determined by our Protestant predecessors who wanted to be free of brain-washing, enabled to think individually and act for their own and the public good, (not for the private over-arching tyranny of church/government coffers and intertwinings of Europe). They thought it was very, very necessary that there be "a free and appropriate public education" to clear and teach minds and focus thought and actions for the success of the then relatively new concept of democratic government.
The public high schools now cater to the rich white students (in Utah bent on overpopulation and biosphere pollution), by offering more and more Advanced Placement courses (which they can turn into college credits by 3 different cheap methods) and "Leadership" courses (often with 20 or fewer students so they get lower student/teacher ratios and more "college counseling" (note: that term is not "post-secondary" counseling emphasizing community colleges and Vocational-Technical training institutes for the majority!!!).
These vouchers are part of a movement to counter rising college and university tuition fees to get basic college general education courses (up to 2 years) taken by predominantly white, (especially in Utah), rich, college educated school board members own kids (who often get "selected") and who take advantage of the systems they knowingly set up! Remember too that it is much to a college/universities budget advantage to bring in the richest high achieving students from both inside and outside the US - so our public school attendees are competing with elitist, often private and/or religious educated aliens/foreigners for limited spots for college and university education opportunities!
These college students are not only from the U.S., Mexico and Canada; this is the education and employment coveted by Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, England, Germany (euro$ anyone) and many others from around the world.
Later, as graduates, these former alien students go home, or stay in the U.S. to compete with our citizens for jobs and our corporations and who later lower the value of the American dollar against foreign currencies and "adapt" or steal our technologies.
They financially seduce our best-of-the-best graduates to go abroad for employment and often to teach, or administer sweat shop corporations and child telemarketers in countries that don't share our humanistic values, benefits, etc.
It is time to say NO to these sneaky vouchers and elitist education tactics and reinvest in our public education schools, teachers and counselors.
We must redirect and strategically utilize and conserve our public school, college and university funds holistically. These efforts could save the breaking backbone of our country: the middle working class. If we don't, our future will be written off as the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the Caliphates of the old Arab world.
We are, and will continue, to decline from within and abroad due to our current catastrophic investments (1.5 trillion $ to date) in subjugationist holy wars of "nation-building" as advised by Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, Gen. Michael Hayden, Orrin Hatch, etc. Will they stay on if Mitt Romney is elected? Hope not.
How do you think it will bode for our Senior Citizens, Social Security and Medicare, since they are already under attack by the imbecilic and corrupt Bush Administration?
Illegal immigrants are a huge cost to our public education system, tying up billions of dollars in time, classrooms, teachers, counselors, etc. let alone costing other huge sums in roads & repairs, diminishing U.S. gas availability which raises prices, contributes to pollution and they comprise very disproportionately large percentages of prison/jail populations, drive up housing costs, drive down wages. Yes some do contribute minimal taxes.
Senior Citizens are now competing for the scarcer and scarcer public dollars as our nation grows weaker and weaker due to war costs nationally, elitist "vouchers", overcrowded schools and other reverse Robin Hood education strategies locally.
The "Greatest Generation" (who went through the Great Depression and fought WW2 & Korea) and their oft selfish baby-boomer offspring now retiring, and their more often selfish grandchildren might well be forced to take it out on the public schools at the ballot box in their own economic survival self-interests at the local level. That is cutting off our nose to spite our face now and in the very near future.
Please see beyond your own self-interest philosophy and State Republican Party dogma and vote against vouchers!
Have a bigger vision of the intersections of opportunity for investment in our public school children and the impact on our nation. Focus on the future of public education for legitimate citizens not illegal’s and / or their anchor-babies; then there will be funds to return our public schools to greatness in the classroom and counseling offices for all, not just on the football and soccer fields and basketball courts.
The price of civilization is taxation for equal, not elitist, education. Vote NO on vouchers.
Scott Shaw, Riverton, UT
5 comments:
Vouchers are not a bad thing.
I find great irony in the fact that all of my liberal friends who sent their kids to private schools are supporting vouchers.
Vouchers will actually save schools money and make them more competitive by giving parents a greater choice as to where to send their children; what is wrong with that.
Vouchers have had great success in the northeast where parents in inner city neighborhoods have used vouchers to enroll their children in the schools of middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods, forcing the schools in the inner city to either improve or close. This is a great example of the free market at work.
Freedom for parents, freedom for children. Freedom from UEA and the teacher unions.
Thank you Utah legislature.
to Anonymous:
Vouchers ARE a bad thing.
But, you're not listening as to why vouchers are bad.
Vouchers is not about freedom and will leave most poor children and parents out but I think that is by design.
We have posted several concerns about vouchers on our website.
Vouchers and simple economics
Higher education grant programs as a justification for vouchers
The truth about vouchers
Vouchers are being fast tracked
Are you serious? Tell me this is a joke! Or maybe, you're actually a school choice supporter and to help out the cause, you created a straw man argument for voucher proponents to easily knock over. If so, thank you.
Do you honestly think there is an LDS conspiracy to pass vouchers? Maybe my ward didn't get the memo on this issue.
And do you really think that our forefathers created public schools? The first public schools that were similar to our modern ones didn't even start happenning until the 1820's or so. As I recall, the US started in 1776.
And if our forefathers wanted to make sure that our children were free of brain-washing from the government, why would they create an over centralized education system run by the government?
And if vouchers are the white man's conspiracy, then how come the places with the biggest voucher/tuition-tax credit programs have lots of minorities? Milwaukee, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Dayton , OH, etc. And how come 49% of the children in a privately funded voucher program in Utah are minorities? And if vouchers only serve the white man, then how come a study by researchers at Harvard showed that black students using vouchers made much larger academic gains than their counterparts in the public schools after only two years? Their gains equalled 1/3 of the achivement gap. If vouchers are the white man's attempt to hold other races back, they sure aren't doing a good job of it.
I think you need to put your conspiracy theories aside for a moment and study up on the realities of school choice programs already in existence. When you do, you'll start to see the real genius of vouchers; it's the same genius that inspired the creation of this great nation; it's also the same genius that has kept us great and made us the envy of the world; it's called FREEDOM.
Scott,
Your rambling, vitriolic attack is somewhat incoherent. I can guarantee it was a complete waste of time to send that to an elected official. Why would he even keep reading it after it gets so random and offensive?
If Utah is driving you so crazy, I'd say it's time to move. Life is too short to live in a place in which you are so uncomfortable! I'm one of those mainstream people you seem to despise, but this place even drives me crazy sometimes (though not for the same reasons as you). I'm not going to stay here forever.
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