School Fundraising in NL Schools

People on Back Talk with Paddy Daly are talking about school fundraising and whether or not it should be allowed. Of course, no one is addressing the real problem here. The problem with the schools is lack of choice. Everything right now is centrally planned and all schools have to be identical. How can you determine the best methods if everything has to be the same? You can't. Quality suffers because there is no competition. Just cookie-cutter solutions.

Other issues arise from having a top-down approach where a few elites determine the course of action for all schools. For example, uniforms. Some parents believe they are good, some say they are bad. But different schools cannot offer different rules on this subject and there is less freedom and less choice. Same goes for religious schools vs. secular schools. Parents should have the choice of which type of school their child attends.

All of this would be possible with vouchers. Attach the funding to the student, not the school board. If many parents preferred a school with uniforms, they could choose that. If they preferred a religious school or a secular school, they could choose either. The schools which were most successful would attract the most students, and then other schools would have to improve their quality to compete.

This also address the issue of some students coming from wealthier families. The vouchers would create an even playing field. Where it has been implemented, students in charter schools have done much better.

The main objectors to such a system are teachers' unions, who are afraid the enormous control they have over education right now will be diminished. They do not want to have to work hard to keep their position, they want to remain unfirable (a new word I made up for this). Also, certain special interests want a captive audience. These include secularists who want religion out of schools, modern sex-advocates who want to teach young children about transsexuality, anal sex, etc. These groups realize parents will not willingly choose these things for their children automatically, so they prefer to have students mandated to do these things.

Choice is scary for those attached to the status quo.

There is TONS of money in education. On average, each student costs $12,500 per year. A classroom of 25 students has average funding of $312,500. Even if you spend $100,000 on overhead expenses per classroom per year, you'd still have $212,500 for a teacher. My gosh, you could afford 2 phd professors.

We could even have a program where special needs children received $20,000 per year, while everyone else would receive $10,000. Whatever the province decides on. The basic point is stop funding monolithic school boards, instead fund the students and let them decide.