By JIM ROETS | Elroy
I feel compelled to respond to Mr. Van Landuyt’s letter regarding public education.
Sir, I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph. After that, our opinions differ greatly.
People choose private education and home schooling for very personal reasons … they care greatly for the quality of education their child receives and feel the public schools don’t supply the product they want to buy. They still have to fund the miseducation of others while paying again for the schooling they choose. Their children score better across the board than their peers in the public arena. The fact that they get a better education should please you when a portion of your tax dollar supports this improvement. Yet you see this as defunding the public schools.
Here in the Royall School District, we are in the top 1% of all public schools in the state when calculating the number of students per teacher, yet students consistently score worse with each succeeding test measuring math and reading skills, finally scoring well into the bottom 50% when they graduate. I bet if we had more students per teacher, the results wouldn’t vary. We could lose a few teachers and save taxpayers with no significant loss to the students’ education. Instead, we are building $11 million dollars’ worth of new architectural grandeur while not improving education one iota. Apparently, the community is satisfied with that result. I’m not, but I’m just a taxpayer.
