California may have a budget

[Dinner]

I've never seen that in 33 years of living here.

[Ben Kenobi]

Total enrollment has actually gone up last I heard but even so the politicians have promised to lower class sizes because having one teacher in a class of 60 students means students don't get much individual time and many fall behind.

Smaller class sizes = More union jobs.

Look, I would mandate larger class sizes, that would be a great way to cut money without seriously doing harm to the students. 40 for 8-12 with 30 in K-7 would make an excellent start.

Of course this means more teachers but it also means students get more individual attention from teachers and so they get a higher quality education.

It also means having to cut other things. Class sizes should get larger, and administrators trimmed by 10 percent higher percentage then the teachers.

Then you could cut education without having a serious impact on the quality of education.

If you are arguing that class sizes should be lower, that's a great argument in favour of increased homeschooling. Can't beat 1 on 1 education.

[Dinner]

Smaller class sizes = More union jobs.

Look, I would mandate larger class sizes, that would be a great way to cut money without seriously doing harm to the students. 40 for 8-12 with 30 in K-7 would make an excellent start.

You dunce! We already have larger then that.

[Ben Kenobi]

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/004083.html

California spends 44.7 billion on education a year.

Per student they spend about 10k a year.

Edit, had wrong number of students.

[Ben Kenobi]

You dunce! We already have larger then that.

Ok, you are spending about 12k or so per kid.

In a class of say, 40, you are looking at 480k in the classroom, of which 60 or so goes to the teacher.

Why can't 420k a year per classroom be enough to run the schools and the administrative costs?

If you cut this to 200k, you would carve out 22 billion out of the budget, and be about 4 billion still in the hole.

[Ben Kenobi]

You dunce! We already have larger then that.

Far from it!

I'm doing the numbers right now.

If Alameda is anything like the state of California as a whole, your student-teacher ratio, K-12 is a crippling 20.1

If your goal were a ratio of 35, you could fire 43 percent of your teaching staff.

I'm not done running the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them dip below a ratio of 20. No wonder California is bankrupt!

http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/

212995 enrolled, 10,591.3 equivalent full time teaching positions. Ratio of 20.11

[Az]

where can I buy California bonds, btw?

[-Jrabbit]

Ok, you are spending about 12k or so per kid.

In a class of say, 40, you are looking at 480k in the classroom, of which 60 or so goes to the teacher.

Why can't 420k a year per classroom be enough to run the schools and the administrative costs?

If you cut this to 200k, you would carve out 22 billion out of the budget, and be about 4 billion still in the hole.

One of your more epic posts, Ben.

So, cut 12 percent from education, just ...because??? Or are you actually proposing a cut from (using your quasi-random numbers) $480K/class to $200K -- nearly 60 percent?

Do you really think and all those households with both parents holding down full-time jobs so they can pay enough rent/mortgage to survive the insane CA real estate market can and should should switch to home schooling? Do you actually believe this is a viable possibility???

"Hey, great news, honey -- The State of California is solvent again! And our kid is awesome because we gave up half our income in order to home-school. Too bad we're now homeless. Good thing the state now has money for food stamps and unemployment benefits..."

[SlowwHand]

They have to do something.

[Ben Kenobi]

So, cut 12 percent from education, just ...because??? Or are you actually proposing a cut from (using your quasi-random numbers) $480K/class to $200K -- nearly 60 percent?

Not quasi-random at all. 60k per teacher, and based on the total spending of 12k per kid, and a class ratio of 40 per kid you get close to 480k per classroom.

In reality, you have 12k per kid, class ratio of 20. Your total classroom cost is about 240k, with 60k to the teacher and 180k for the administration.

What is killing you are the class sizes. If you had an average of 40, you would cut your education budget in half, without sacrificing quality of education.

Do you really think and all those households with both parents holding down full-time jobs so they can pay enough rent/mortgage to survive the insane CA real estate market can and should should switch to home schooling? Do you actually believe this is a viable possibility???

It wouldn't make sense if you were with 1 kid in downtown San Francisco.

But if you had a fairly large family, out in the country, yes it would make quite a bit of sense.

"Hey, great news, honey -- The State of California is solvent again! And our kid is awesome because we gave up half our income in order to home-school. Too bad we're now homeless. Good thing the state now has money for food stamps and unemployment benefits..."

It depends on what you want out of life, I wouldn't pay the insane CA taxes, or the insane CA real-estate market, but then I wouldn't live in CA anyways, and if I did it would be out in the country, where the real-estate is cheap.

[ricketyclik]

The fact that revenue is falling during a recession causing a defecit need not be cause for alarm. Isn't the world on board with the idea of governments spending the way out of the recession? Yes, it means debt, but the social costs of spiralling unemployment are far greater than the spending debt costs, in most current economic analysis I'm reading.

[Dinner]

Far from it!

I'm doing the numbers right now.

If Alameda is anything like the state of California as a whole, your student-teacher ratio, K-12 is a crippling 20.1

If your goal were a ratio of 35, you could fire 43 percent of your teaching staff.

I'm not done running the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them dip below a ratio of 20. No wonder California is bankrupt!

http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/

212995 enrolled, 10,591.3 equivalent full time teaching positions. Ratio of 20.11

It varies school district to school district. Yes, some rich ones have gotten the number down (especially for the elementary schools) but most are much larger. Check out high schools in LA unified.

[Zkribbler]

What is killing you are the class sizes. If you had an average of 40, you would cut your education budget in half, without sacrificing quality of education.

Trying to teach 40 kids in a classroom is insane!

[DinoDoc]

That amounts to just $10 million per year so out of $50 billion education budget we're talking peanuts.

Are you telling me that this isn't emblematic of waste going on in the CA education system?

Besides that's basically just people are appealing job cuts and they continue to get paid until the job cut is finalized so really we're only talking about a handful of people for a short time each year.

Short time each year?
For seven years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has paid Matthew Kim a teaching salary of up to $68,000 per year, plus benefits.

[rah]

When I was in grammer school (yes back in the stone age) it was a catholic private school.
Our class sizes were closer to 45-50 consistently compared to the the 30 or less in public schools.
Based on average grades as freshmen in the public HS the catholic kids were much better prepared than those from the public grammer feeder schools.

I look back on what was different.
I refuse to believe the nuns were that much better teachers since they were usually close to death.
Our facilities were usually woefully lacking compared to the public schools. Our science lab consisted of a moveable table that had a couple of flasks and a little sulphur for pathetic experiments. Most of our experiments used milk cartons. Our gym was the old church where a basketball hoop replaced the big cross behind the alter. Instead of a free throw line, we had the steps at the foot of the removed altar.
We were in a reasonably stable suburb so there weren't a lot of single parents or poverty for the public students to use as an excuse. (heck a considerable number of the catholic families had more than half a dozen kids so they weren't getting that much specialized attention at home)

The main difference was that corporal punishment was allowed in private schools but not in public schools.
And Your parents supported it. (if you got a licking at school it was usually repeated at home after the nuns called) Now while I won't argue the pros and cons of corporal punishment it did result in order in the classroom. Kids didn't act up and disrupt the education process making it possible for a teacher to handle a larger class size.
Lessons and behaviors learned in grammer school carried into HS.

Imagine how much money could be saved if larger class sizes could be made effective. Maybe we should start beating kids again.