Taxpayers: Shelling out too much and receiving too little

I’m tired of getting ripped off.

You and I are paying too much in taxes, we’re paying too much for gasoline, which is over-priced to begin with. To add insult to injury we can get it down the road in South Carolina for a whole lot less. (Why can’t we purchase gasoline for even less in North Carolina?)

When it comes to our schools, I don’t think we get our money’s worth. I was reading studies on charter schools and how they are constantly under scrutiny (or they don’t get their charter for the following year).

In almost every case, regardless of where they’re established, they operate at a lower overhead and achieve higher test scores than their public school counterparts. Yet on the state level there has been a cap on the number of charter schools, and any effort to raise the cap is shouted down.

I’d submit the public school system recognizes they are in trouble and can’t compete. But if you eliminate the competition there’s no longer an issue.

We have great problems in our schools. If we had competent and dedicated individuals overseeing some of the schools (meaning some principals and assistant principals) we would never have gotten to this point, but somewhere along the way we got lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I personally believe many of our teachers are outstanding and the same can be said with most in the administration.

But I also personally believe some of the administrators are overpaid (in some cases garnering six-figure incomes) and the teachers are more often than not underpaid.

Many, however, do it because they feel called to do it, and they love the children. (If you’ve ever been a teacher, you know what I mean.)

A few years ago when I taught in college, I discovered some of my students (a few) could barely read.

They could probably read road signs or something elementary, but beyond that they were lost. They also expected me to “give” them a good grade that would allow them to advance through the ranks and eventually graduate.

But how could I do this, knowing they could hardly pass the course? What about the even bigger issue that they were unprepared for college work and shouldn’t have graduated from high school?

What does this say about the oversight of the teachers and administrators, and what does it say about our educational system as a whole?

In some cases discipline is so out of hand in one school that parents have resorted to homeschooling their children or sending them to private school instead.

For those who have the time or money to choose this option that’s one solution. But what about the majority of parents working two or three jobs to make ends meet, who don’t have a choice? What happens to their children?

Are they to be lumped into the same place where discipline is out of hand, administrators are seemingly more concerned about their careers and there is little accountability?

We didn’t get in this mess overnight, and we won’t get out of it right away. But we’ll never get out of it until we get fed up and demand things change.

So what are we to do?

Starting this week, there will be people filing for office at the board of elections, in Bolivia. There will be plenty of smiles, plenty of pictures, announcements and campaigning.

In some cases, the candidates will be pre-loaded with political rhetoric and won’t go too far off the road to individual thought

You, however, must ask them the hard questions, the specific questions and difficult questions as to how they will change things for the better.

You also need to let them know that if you are willing to support them, you will hold them to account.

If you or I were running, I’d think we’d expect nothing less.