Posted on 02/26/2007 8:20:35 PM PST by patton
This morning, I was waiting with my five-year old daughter at the bus stop, for her daily commute to Kindergarten on the cheese wagon. Our golden retriever waited with us, being her usual hyperactive self.
While we waited, two things of note happened - first, there was a spectacular car wreck at the light a block down the street. Cops arrived in mere moments, the ambulance a few minutes later, as they should. Good for us - we have excellent city services. Prayers for all involved - I hope their injuries are not too serious.
Then, a city work crew showed up, lined their trucks up across from the bus stop, and proceeded to offload their equipment.
The bus was delayed by the car crash, so while the police sorted things out, we watched the city crew get to work.
Snowblowing the city park.
"I beg your pardon?", you are thinking.
Snowblowing the city park.
Hmmm. Perhaps we have too much government.
Anyway, Kelly got on the bus, and I went on with my day, with a burning curiousity about what, exactly, we are paying for, in our little Virginia city of 10,000 residents.
A web search was in order.
First, the schools - we have a city-wide K-12 enrollment of 1863 kids. Dividing the schools budget by that number, we spend $21,000 per kid for education each year.
But wait - we just built a new school, at a cost of $30.8 million. I called the city comptroller, and he informed me that loan is being paid off like a mortgage, at about $3m per year. Add another $2000/kid each year, as this is in the city budget, not the school budget. Hmmm.
Armed with this tidbit, I glanced at the rest of the city budget, to see what else was in there.
Another $2000/kid per year, for things like maintenance of the school rec fields, by the parks department.
So, from what I could find on the web during lunch, sending a kid to kindergarten in Falls Church, VA, costs about $25,000 per year, per kid.
I could not find data on the mandatory-until-12-years-old after-school daycare, or on the assorted fees paid directly by parents (e.g., I paid $150 for my 17 year old to park at the HS), and, ironically, the cost of snow removal from the schools.
But let us assume this averages another $1,000/kid, per year.
We are in the ballpark of $26,000 for a kid in kindergarten.
For reference, Harvard tuition is $30,500 per year. So public school kindergarten in my city is cheaper.
But just barely.
The very exclusive private school Al Gore attended in DC, when his dad was a Senator, currently charges $19,000 per year.
Wow. That is cheaper than kindergarten in Falls Church!
Cool! I lived in Falls Church (on Van Buren) when my dad was stationed at the Pentagon in the early 60's. We attened the Falls Church. My brother found some antique horseshoes there once. I went to Madison Elementary School. I remember like it was yesterday when the principal came to the door of our classroom and announced that the President had been shot.
Madison got knocked down in the 70's, due to declining enrollment. That is why we just spent $31m on a new school.
Ping.
Which one?
Don't you have anything better to do during your lunch break, like um, maybe EAT?????
I can eat at my desk...LOL
More ritzy schools that are cheaper than PS kindergarten (PE consists of horseback riding, etc)
Congressional Schools of VA - 19,250
Flint Hill Academy - 22,935
And the only school I found that cost more than PS kindergarten - Madiera at 28,330
madiera? not sending the bug there... :(
FYI, as someone whose kids all attend private schools, let me tell you that almost all private schools have endowment funds, and gala fundraisers, all of which go to supplement the tuition. we have received calls every year from Visitation, and now Gonzaga, asking for donations to the annual fund on top of already hefty tuition. xsteen will be solicited for her OWN donation to Visitation, next year, her first year in college. so yes, public schools are grossly inefficient in their money management, private schools do a much better job, but tuition is not the only $$$ paying the frieght at these schools.
I agree - and most catholic schools recieve some parish support.
But the cost of a public kindergarten education is a crime, IMHO.
Interesting accounting bump.
I am amazed that this went nowhere - I was astounded to find out what public education really costs.
I guess most folks are just jaded to it.
Sad.
i am surprised it took you this long to figure this out, frankly, this is your third kid. imagine how thrilled we are to pay the same taxes to support those schools, in which our kids have not and will not spend one minute.
It's not that I lacked a sense of something rotten in denmark, it is that I lacked time to go research it.
And your joy at this epiphany is just my revenge for the whole SS thing. ;)
Actually, there is an endowed PS in VA - it is paid for by the endowment interest, not taxes. I have to really look into that.
But first, I want to see how much we spend on the 8-bed homeless shelter, with no kitchen.
Bet it is over a million.
Sigh. Tell xsteen she is a genious, it IS FEWFC.
Which one what? President? Kennedy. Church? THE Falls Church. Speaking of Kennedy, my father, a major at the time, was responsible for changing the code for military communications during the Cuban missile crisis. No doubt it is now far more sophisticated and far faster than the 1/2 hour gap between code changes back then.
Well...bummer. I found out last year that the house we lived in when my father was stationed at Wright-Patterson AFB is now a swimming pool in a city park. Almost makes me feel like I imagined that part of my life.
Sounds like a few of you responding on this thread know each other. An interesting accounting twitch is that in Washington State (and a few others), a child can obtain his associate's degree tuition-free if he is enrolled in a public high school. The state says it is less expensive in the long run. Huh? My homeschooled son was one of the many homeschoolers to take advantage of that. Enroll in public high school, never set foot in it except to grab a transcript for a four-year college, and graduate from high school and junior college at the same time. Not a bad deal...
Not bad at all. Clever.
See page 2 of this weeks FCNP. LOLOLOL.
Of course it's less expensive than public school, CC credits usually cost somewhere around $70. It was $50 for me... I got two years of my college education for 3k, and it all transferred to my four-year school.
PAGE 2! LOL. Printed as a letter to the editor, but they printed it.
It is not the teachers - frankly, they are underpaid (the good ones).
From what I figgured out, 39% of the budget goes to teachers and facilities.
THE OTHER 69% is OVERHEAD!
Somebody need to do some requiremnts defintion, IMHO. Why do we pay for all this crap?
Madiera, the ONLY private school in the DC area that costs more than public school, includes dressage lessons. WTFO?
On the other hand, my wife (leda) has a MS in SpED, 15 years classroom experience, changes diapers on teanagers, etc., serves as a teacher consultant, works till 8 pm often, has had to deal with parents who send lawyers to parent teacher conferences, you name it.
She makes so little, it would shock you. For the DC area, if she were a single mother, she would be on food stamps.
It is not the teacher cost in our Ao, it is the dang overhead costs.
(VA has no collective bargaining for teachers.)
(And that is a good thing.)
Sooo...does our HS really need to offer golf lessons?
I see some things where we might say, "Yes, but..."
And that is the problem.
Nobody ever says, "We could do that, but do we want kindergarten to cost more than a year at harvard?"
All Harvard students receive a subsidy - even students who do not qualify for need-based aid receive a substantial subsidy, or implicit scholarship, from the university because the price charged covers only about two-thirds of the cost to Harvard for the education provided. The remaining third is paid for largely by endowments and gifts
so yes, the public schools are inefficiently educating your kids, but equating the cost with a private school education is not accurate. i say be happy you aren't coughing up any more than your tax dollars. if you want to pay for the private school education, you can do so : )
I talked to Dr. XX at work, who has PhDs from both Harvard and MIT.
He says Harvard is about $70k per student per year, really.
But, still. As taxpayers, we can either give each kid a voucher to go to ST. Anselm's, or, for a measly $7k more, send them to public school.
Would you have appreciated a $20k per kid per year education voucher?
That is a lot less than the public schools cost, in FC.
I think it would take a platoon of forensic accountants to decifer what it costs for a public education in DC.
I would not try it.
But given that the schnooze printed it - how many folks are going, "Do say what?"
LOL. That earned me some credit, somewhere.
i have always been in favor of vouchers and i guess since my kids have never gone to public school i am just perplexed that people haven't been aware of the huge ripoff that's been going on for forever. if catholic/private schools just decided to close their doors and their students appeared on the public school doorstep tomorrow, demanding their education, they might have to scramble a bit to find somewhere to put them and decide how they are going to afford to educate them... i guess i am just not understanding your point bc i thought it was obvious and everyone knew it already. i missed the article, i have no access to the FCNP except for the orthondontist ofc and we aren't due there for another month.
Good on you. Can I suggest that you write this all down on paper, and walk door to door delivering this information. Then run for school board, and require that all funds being spent are revealed to the community. Here I thought it was about $6000 a year to educate a child.
By the way, does anyone know the cost of a child at the Hillsdale Academy in Michigan?
I am writing a paper for class, Public Education vs. Vouchers.
Guess where it is going. LOL.
I think we could easily give every kid in the US, from K to 12, $20k a year for school, and save BILLIONS.
But that is just me.
Better than going door-to-door, I got it published on page 2 of the local liberal rag. LOL.
oh ok, so you only came to this realization because a class made you focus on it! we have known this for years, so i kept trying to figure out exactly what your point was!
No, that is not correct.
I knew we were getting rode hard and put away wet, the class just inspired me to go see how hard.
And it was worse than I imagined.
I told our chief scientist in STL about this yesterday, how Madiera provides a better education for the student, and the HORSE, for about the same price...
He said, "So you are telling me, you want a pony?"
Well, yeah. LOL. I want a pony.
I want to send my kids to catholic school, for a fraction of the cost of public school.
And I want my taxes to go down.
And I want a pony.
It's "Madeira" and that's cheap. I just checked this year's tuition for boarding students at my prep school - $41,535. Maybe the fees at Madeira were just for day students.
I can't spell in multiple lnguages, you know. In fact, in all of them. LOL.
Yes, I used the day student rate for comparison - does your public school provide room and board? Mine doesn't.
Thank heavens - what would that cost...and how bad would it mess up our kids...
well good luck with that... ; )
Okay, then, that's comparable. My school listed day tuition as $29,820 for this year. And the stables provide horses, but they don't GIVE you a horse. At my school, you could take riding as part of the phys. ed. program, and either use the school's horses, or bring your own from home and board it there, for a pretty hefty fee.
Sooo - you are comfortable with the idea that PS tuition is about the same as that at Harvard?
Bunch of begowned PhDs teaching your kids KG class?
Published research going on?
Or are we wasting a PILE of money?
If you look up thread, I posted a bunch of rates from local elite schools in the DC area.
Only one cost more than public school. (I want a pony! LOL)
I think it's an outrage! I'm comfortable with the fact that tuition payments are over for me. I was just pointing out that public schools have at least a bit more of an "excuse" for gouging us (bloated bureaucracy, plus not a lot of charitable contributions).
So why don't we fix that? Would you give money to a charity with 61% overhead?
I believe the public-school system is too huge for our children's education as a whole to be improved by charter schools and vouchers--they will always be a drop in the bucket, as the intense competition for charter schools shows. We should instead work within the public-school system to make it successful.
We also don't want thousands of different philosophies separating us as a people. Who knows what's being taught at the This World Is Ours charter school? I know that the larger public schools are overrun with leftists, and that needs to be remedied as well.
what are you paying in local taxes per year?
You have completely passed over the point, that the worst public education available is substaintially more expensive than the best private education, including horsebackriding and whitewater rafting.
Still want your kids in public school?
And no child of mine has ever gone to a public school. I paid the price for a better education, but it shouldn't have to be that way. In fact, it can't be that way for 99% of us.
Take a look at Chris Whittle's book Crash Course. It's full of ideas. If you don't like some of them, you might like others.
he's preaching to the choir here. those of us with kids in private school have known this all along and that's why we opted out of the gov't schools. and other people figure, hey i pay my taxes and my kids go to school for "free". Fairfax Co. VA is one of the best school dists in the country. i haven't and wouldn't send my kids to public school if YOU paid ME.
xs, I am proposing to pay you NOT to send your kids, and me, too.
Taxes on the house are about $7K. don't know what else I pay, still digging it out.
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