For those who do choose to become school teachers, have the guts and courage to speak out when the school board appoints an incompetent principal, or pays the school coach more money than the physics teacher, or fires a physics teacher because he disciplined a student for sleeping in class as happened recently in the County of Gwinnett, City of DaCula. When a principal, usually a former coach with an education degree from UGA or another one of the schools in Georgia, demands to pass or change the grade a student of a colleague whom that teacher has already flunked, have the courage to speak up. When reprisals are taken out against a colleague for speaking up at at PTA meeting demanding lower student- teacher ratios, speak up and support those courageous teachers, often few and far between, who have the courage to speak up to an autocratic and dictatorial administration of incompetents on school boards, appointing more incompetent dictators as school superintendents and principals, with the power to fire teachers at their whims, in secret behind closed doors.
And we wonder why it is hard to get good teachers? Yes the salary is part of it, but the main part is the reprehensible system of public education in Georgia, where the funding is forced from property owners whose children graduated long ago, but whose suggestions for operating the schools are totally disregarded. The law needs to be changed to permit a citizen line item tax veto to remove the money from incompetent public schools, including the University of Georgia. Since money runs the show, only then, will we see any meaningful change in education in Georgia. By the way, there are some schools systems where some administrators even hire their own family members and some make very good money. But these situations are usually never investigated or reported in any newspaper in Georgia, because those that do exist routinely violate the rules of journalism each and every day, just like the daily newspaper in Athens, which never reports salaries of school personel or their qualifications or their class assignments , almost never reports on the public hospital and possible negligent conduct, almost never reports on tyranny in the local magistrate's courts or the district attorney's office,almost never reports on police secrecy,almost and never investigates the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, in the now 13+ year old murder and sexual assault of former UGA senior Jennifer Lynn Stone, April 23, 1992, but routinly reports on issues far away, while neglecting tyranny right in our back yard. We need to increase courage of citizens in our society, not necessarily salaries.
I'm with you Winfield. All the local paper cares about is the football prospects. As for the teaching school at UGA, why don't they start in their own back yard and mentor the kids in Athens where the drop out rate is over 50%, or is that too much real world for all those sorority girls and frat boys with the Bush stickers on their cars and their stupid yellow ribbons about supporting our troops when what they really mean is support our troops as long as it's the poor, underprivledged kids fighting the war.
Spring Break
anonymous871
posted 8/29/05 @ 10:58 AM EST
And we wonder why it is hard to get good teachers? Yes the salary is part of it, but the main part is the reprehensible system of public education in Georgia, where the funding is forced from property owners whose children graduated long ago, but whose suggestions for operating the schools are totally disregarded. The law needs to be changed to permit a citizen line item tax veto to remove the money from incompetent public schools, including the University of Georgia. Since money runs the show, only then, will we see any meaningful change in education in Georgia. By the way, there are some schools systems where some administrators even hire their own family members and some make very good money. But these situations are usually never investigated or reported in any newspaper in Georgia, because those that do exist routinely violate the rules of journalism each and every day, just like the daily newspaper in Athens, which never reports salaries of school personel or their qualifications or their class assignments , almost never reports on the public hospital and possible negligent conduct, almost never reports on tyranny in the local magistrate's courts or the district attorney's office,almost never reports on police secrecy,almost and never investigates the criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice, in the now 13+ year old murder and sexual assault of former UGA senior Jennifer Lynn Stone, April 23, 1992, but routinly reports on issues far away, while neglecting tyranny right in our back yard. We need to increase courage of citizens in our society, not necessarily salaries.
Winfield J. Abbe
wjabbe@aol.com