It's budget season. Enuf said. But I digress....
The Shelby County School system is short to the tune of 8 million, 24 million, or 44 million depending on who your talking to. If the current superintendent could ask for what he would really like to receive well that would be about 200 million. He knows that's not feasible but I guess he doesn't know how Catholic schools manage to educate children on a shoestring budget without coming to the city year after year with the need for more and more money for pathetic results.
27 people spoke in favor of giving the schools more money. I had every intention of speaking until I saw the sheer numbers of people there, including the Black Lives Matters movement, which apparently is growing in Memphis. After being totally outnumbered and realizing my 2 minutes was not going to change anyone's mind, I opted to save my thoughts for a time when my words would actually matter. I know there are more hard working taxpayers who pay for the ineffective school system than there are bureaucrats and others who feed off of this ineffective system but until THEY show up, the status quo will continue.
Remember the Wheel Tax which was only supposed to last for 2 years and fund education? Well, it's been going on for over 20 years and apparently unbeknownst to the public and the commission, this tax was being to diverted to pay for the county debt. I guess we should all be happy it hasn't been diverted to politicians pockets but when you can't trust the word of most politicians, how do we know that is not the case?
The Shelby County School system continues to shrink as they lose numbers from moving out of county and bodies in their schools yet the school budget only seems to increase? Why?
The Unions obviously paid for and organized the crowd as they were wearing Tshirts that said "Teachers First", Stand With Children, "If we don't stand for children, we don't stand for much", Fundshoolsfirst.com, etc and had professionally made signs. I have to wonder...how much Soros has committed to have these local "grassroots" organizations appear as "grassroots"?
Hmmmm Stand For Children...where have I heard that before? They were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Stand For Children...who could be against that?
Try speaking about ROI, or justifying the 291 million in the current budget....Imagine Catholic Schools with that kind of money and the difference they could make. No, this meeting today was all about emotions which is why they trotted out several children to read off scripts that had OBVIOUSLY not been written by them, they couldn't even hardly read what was before them but yeah...give this school system more money because then we can edumacate some children.
I have to tell you without wanting to seem downcast, I was sad at this meeting because I know these people really believe that if the county just gave them more money, they could educate children and keep them from entering the prison system. There were some people there that spoke about the injustice of less educated students being the result of racism. Shelby County funds the white areas better than they fund the African American areas only it wouldn't matter if you gave a trillion dollars to the heavier African American schools because this problem stems from broken and destructive families. Restoring families is the only solution to healing this problem but no one dares mention that...except for Bill Cosby and you see what happens to someone like him when they dare speak the truth.
The school system needs restoring...but money is not what's going to restore it...
The budget was deferred back to committee on the 29th. Your presence there would be greatly appreciated. I know everyone thinks the presidential election is so important but it's what's going on in your own backyard that you need to pay attention to.
As a sidenote....Darth Basar made an appearance! He only comes to about 1 in every 3 meetings since he got a new promotion at his job. He had this BRILLIANT idea to overcome the school deficit by creating more debt to replace the old debt. Someone call the FED. I'm thinking he has a future...though somewhat temporary as something that can't go on forever won't.....