Act 72

This weekend I hoped to write a pithy blog posting on Act 72, but in between checking one of the Little Janes for lice (a classmate has it), treating the kittens (with us one week now!) for earmites, writing thank you notes to parents who worked in my section of the spring fair, other PTA business, and going in to work for 4 hours on Saturday to catch up on a project so I can take Wednesday off to chaperone a field trip, and listening to a friend who suffered a terrible loss, it just got lost.

Fortunately, Maddona & Young wrote a good analysis that said a lot of what I was going to say, only better. Check it out here.

There are two points I want to make, or expound on. It is my understanding that percentage of school budgets paid by the state has been declining. I'll have to check that out later this week so take it with a grain of salt. What I do know is that when I was in school the school paid for our Weekly Readers and for school assemblies and playground balls and the like. That is no longer true at my local public school. Those costs, and many others, are paid for by the PTA, that is, by the parents. The PTA at the oldest Little Jane's school has an annual budget of around $50,000. That's a lot of bakes sales. Believe me, that money is earned with a lot of sweat. We don't get big donations. It is all made through wrapping paper sales, and t-shirt sales, and the spring fair and so on. When people work that hard to raise money they want a say in how it is spent. When we buy basics that means the school administration has to work with the PTA if they want that money. It shifts the power structure just a bit. The relationship between the two can be stormy. The principal has to come to the PTA and ask for support of programs that parents may not think are working. I saw a principal throw a hissy and leave a budget meeting in a snit because some things she wanted were voted down.

I would like to reaffirm Maddona & Young's theory that people don't support gambling. That includes me. Two years down the road if people arent' losing enough money at the casinos we would be hearing ads saying you could cash your social security check on the premises. That would just be pitiful. The only way we can afford schools is to encourage old people to squander their living expenses. Surely there are other alternatives. I went to Atlantic City shortly after moving to the PA, to try out for "Wheel of Fortune" (I was unemployed and depressed, that's my only excuse. I was even more depressed when I washed out after the first paper test). I lost $0.75 (seventy-five cents) at the slot machines and havent' gambled since. The casinos were just awful, sleazy men and little old ladies in track suits, looking like they spend hours there. The only times I've been back are when professional meetings were held there and it was unavoidable, and then I complained about it. Apparantly others did, too, since the meetings were moved.

I'll blog more on Act 72 later but those are my initial thoughts.