Out of curiosity, what are all these extras required at the high school level?
You're right about schools not using their funds wisely. This was a constant complaint of my wife. They hired administrative staff workers and then count them in the student/teacher ratio to make it look like they had lower class sizes. Administrators buy high tech gadgets that seldom work right and hinder teaching rather than help. But it looks good on parent night. Teachers are expected to teach children who can't speak English and if the children fail then it's the teacher's fault. Administrators don't want the expense of keeping them or dealing with the complaining parents. So teachers past them on.
My wife just retired as a mid-school Physics/Chemistry teacher. Each teacher where my wife worked was given one ream of paper (250 sheets) for copying handouts, tests, worksheets, etc. to last them for the entire school year. None of this could be done with notebooks as the students seldom take notes. And if they don't give handouts, parents complain that no notes were given. Her last year she had over 200 students so you do the math as how long one ream of paper would last. Teachers are required (not asked) to decorate their rooms. So posters, back drops, borders were purchased at our expense. This also included the cost of tape, staples, glue, and anything else needed to hang the stuff. To keep up their teaching certificates, teachers are required to attend classes (in the summer) at their expense. As far as science experiments which she was required to do, the school would supply some things but we normally would have to cough up some money to offset the expense. We laugh at the $250 deductible that we got to take off our income tax which never came close to what we paid out.
Grant it, there are teachers that are not very dedicated to their students. Many of them simply don't care. And to be perfectly honest, I can be sympathetic to their plight. My wife was not one of them. My wife would go to work and then come home and grade over 200 papers or work on lesson assignments the rest of the night-every night. On the weekend she was busy recording the grades and preparing next weeks lessons. I cleaned the house and made the dinners while my wife worked on her school work. In the summer months, she was busy getting organized for the next year. She rarely had any time off. We were locked into the school season for our vacation and often had to juggle our schedule around her schedule in the summer when she was attending classes.
Last year we both had finally had had it and she retired early. We are both grateful that she made it.
You wrote, “And most schools don’t use their funds wisely, that’s not the parent’s fault.”
It most assuredly IS the parents’ fault; and the fault of every taxpaying citizen of the district (and beyond). If the din of the masses of aggravated taxpayers is loud enough at meetings of School boards, village and city councils, county boards, and at the State and Federal levels, then things will begin to change.
To say that people don’t bear the responsibility for oversight of these officials is simply wrong.
Wow, what school district do you live in.
I have been teaching for 31 years (this is my last year teaching) and I make 79,000.
The school district where I live re-negotiated teachers' contracts before Gov. Walker (R-WI) signed off on Act 10, which did away with unions negotiating over pay. Gov. Walker warned that districts might be short on money if they didn't let the law take effect before they re-negotiated. There's more money in the state treasury, but my district took the biggest hit in state aid, losing more than half-a-million dollars this year. Teachers are angry (still) but they were warned.