A response to Mrs. Buckley, Board of Education

In response to Mrs. Buckley, Clinton Board of Education

Disappointment.  Frustration.  Disillusionment. These words capture my state of mind in regard to the proposed Clinton Education budget and the American education system in total. The Clinton Education budget has increased from 20 million dollars in 2003 to nearly 33 million dollars today.

Since my move to Clinton, the education budget has increased on average nearly one million dollars per year.  Morgan is still considered a “Transitioning” school by the 2012-2013 CT School Performance report. This is the third level under Excelling and Progressing.   As a father with three students in our public system, it pains me to explain to my “elected” leaders I expect results driven programs in return for higher taxes.  Would any Board member pay your cell phone company $100 dollars more per year for 13 years, yet get less coverage or more dropped calls?  No.  How about less cable channels for higher fees or pay more for a manicure but only get eight fingers done.  This is why I believe taxpayers are becoming wary of ever increasing education expenses.  Where’s the beef? 

Your complicated “yes” used to be quite simple, but has been sickeningly twisted from 50 years of progressive education “reform” which has produced false needs requiring ever more funding.  Our forebearers, educated in the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, music, art, gym, and foreign language manufactured the space shuttle, created vaccines, discovered nuclear fission, invented the light bulb, and have fed the world for the past 100 years.  For those who think I am living in “the past” do you really believe you are more complex or sophisticated than say John Adams or Thomas Jefferson?  Are any of us more intelligent than Abraham Lincoln just because we have a smart phone or a computer?    

So what has changed?  First, academia has cemented in place a ballooning and bloated bureaucracy to serve itself and ensure not only its survival, but it’s continuing expansion.  Is the modern education system so arrogant as to think it knows better ways to educate than processes used throughout early history?  How many times have we reinvented the way we teach our kids math since the 1960’s?  Every veteran teacher out there knows to file their lesson plans, since it is only a matter of time before a “new” method of teaching is brought up, when in reality it is an old method renamed and rebranded.  American students of the 1900’s led the world in engineering and medicine not because of a wider variety of programs offered in grade school, but because of the focus on having a solid knowledge of the basics which everything else stems from in college and life.

Secondly, accountability and responsibility of and by parents, administrators and teachers to produce a high school graduate ready for college or the work force has fallen by the wayside.  In more and more school systems, the students rule the roost. Is more funding really the solution for this?  A recent article dated May 15, 2014, stated the District of Columbia spends 29,349 dollars per student with 83 percent not proficient in reading and 81 percent not proficient in math. Why is it taboo to demand and expect a certain level of performance from a student? As taxpayers “investing” in students, should we not expect a certain level of return for our investment?

And last, I abhor our lack of competition in today’s society beginning in our school system.  Catering to “self- esteem” for the past 20 years has led to socially promoted graduating classes of youth who are ill prepared for college, let alone the job market.  Little emotional control, limited social and communication skills, and hardly any sense of work ethic, our coddling of today’s child has led us to being a society of the least common denominator.  Learning what it feels like to lose, and being told no, however emotionally upsetting, when channeled correctly, teaches one to learn from mistakes, adapt and IMPROVE PERFORMANCE so one does not lose or get rejected again.  This point is critical in order for our children to “compete” globally.

To the Board of Education, take our system back to basics and produce a quality product at a reasonable price.  None of what I have outlined above needs money, it requires leadership, common sense and a public relations campaign to change the very nature of the education system back to what once was the envy of the world.  I believe then, a majority of voters would be happy to “simply” vote yes.

Respectfully, Tom Riccio