When are we going to bail out our schools?

[proud2BlibKansan]

Cost of Loan Bailout, if Needed, Could Be $25 Billion
http://www.truthout.org/article/cost-loan-bailout-if-needed-could-be-25-billion




A room at Tennyson Middle School that should be filled with eighth-graders learning about robotics, animation and lasers instead sits empty.

The tile floor is warped from recurring problems with standing water, and gaping holes in the ceiling signal where the campus custodial staff has quit replacing tiles that, they say, are just going to get soaked and rot away every time it rains.
http://www.wacotrib.com/news/content/news/stories/2008/05/08/05082008wacWISDbond.html

What I found was shocking; brown, undrinkable water coming out of school fountains, ancient boilers, freezing classrooms where children have to wear winter coats during lessons, crumbling staircases, the list goes on.
http://www.citynews.ca/blogs/familymatters_7403.aspx

Eighty-eight percent of the state's school districts report at least one school not meeting health or safety standards. Some startling examples paint a vivid picture of the problem:

· In Yuma County, part of a roof collapsed in the elementary school.

· In Conejos County, students have had to dodge tiles falling from a sagging roof.

· And in eastern El Paso County, part of a student's desk, with the student in it, fell through the rotted floor of a classroom trailer.
http://denver.yourhub.com/Thornton/Stories/Education/General-Education/Story~396655.aspx

Another GAO report has estimated that repairing and upgrading schools would cost $11 billion. (this is from a 1996 article)
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,6891,00.html

Schools need basic repairs or replacement all over our country -- hundreds of billions of dollars of work projects that cannot be shipped to China.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0420-09.htm

"Martin Luther King Junior High School," notes the Post-Dispatch in a story published in the early spring of 1989, "was evacuated Friday afternoon after sewage flowed into the kitchen.... The kitchen was closed and students were sent home." On Monday, the paper continues, "East St. Louis Senior High School was awash in sewage for the second time this year." The school had to be shut because of "fumes and backed-up toilets." Sewage flowed into the basement, through the floor, then up into the kitchen and the students' bathrooms. The backup, we read, "occurred in the food preparation areas."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Third_World_US/SI_Kozol_StLouis.html

Credit crunch forces the U.S. government to bail out mortgage lenders with $5.3 TRILLION of loans on their books
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1034829/Credit-crunch-forces-U-S-government-bail-mortgage-lenders-5-3-TRILLION-loans.html

[arcadian]

1. Republicans have been hell bent to dismantle ALL social programs.

This is indicitive of that policy. Fucking scum sucking leeches.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. I am really not looking forward to one more August in a non air conditioned school

It just blows my mind that we actually expect our kids to function in these old buildings that aren't air conditioned.

[MadMaddie]

2. Not until we have Obama as President and there is a national

push for Schools to get the money they need to be healthy places to learn.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. And then it will be ten more years before we fix the buildings

[MadMaddie]

7. True dat...but maybe we can get rid of No Child Left Behind

and start educating our kids.

[Occulus]

5. republicans have wanted to completely destroy public education for as long as I have lived

I don't know what their solution is- religious schools? PRIVATE schools?- but they have been solidly determined for my entire life to destroy public education. I personally very firmly believe this is a direct consequence of the anger of the religious (IN GENERAL) toward public schools not giving official favor to one specific religion.

I think we ALL know which religion is responsible for that attitude. Christianity has, in general, been pissed off ever since the Enlightenment, but in particular ever since we "took god (sic) out of schools".

Problem is, god never belonged in school in the first place.

[baldguy]

6. After the banks, the automakers, the airlines, the oil companies

the big media companies, weapons manufacturers, China...

Schools should stop whining and get in line!