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I find it amazing that the pricey tuition you surely must pay to send your child to Christian school can't cover supplies, and despite the money that is poured into public schools, kids' parents have to buy basic things - they're given a list? Astounding.

I don't EVER remember being told what supplies to get when I was in school. Sure, we bought our own, and they stayed our own, and in addition, classrooms had an abundance of crayons, glue, paper etc.

What do they spend all my tax dollars on anyway?

Actually, we are fortunate with the school in our church. They don't charge members a dime to go to the school and you are expected to tithe accordingly to the church(which means you can right off tuition basically as a tithe to the church). It is a small school with only about 100 students in K-8. My daughter is only in a class of 8 children. This school really could use the help and they are working hard to ward off charging members tuition although they are in the hole. I would just rather they ask for the help instead of confiscating my child's things. I would be happy to have a community box for when kids are running low, or things break, or they are in between replacing their things, but I want to provide that seperate from my child's items. She takes great pride in caring for them and does not want HER things to end up the box. She even offered some of her allowance to buy crayons to benefit the church box.
I understand the need, but I have a feeling this is less about need and more about having a teacher right out of college who has all her "new" teaching ideas she's trying to use with the kids. Despite this, she has been really helping the kids accelerate even more in their reading and math. Her enthusiasm in helping them learn has been positive, but let's just say it is a double edge sword.
Sorry for any mispellings--gotta go run after my boy;-)

Graft, corruption, programs that don't work, legal fees for one thing or another, etc., etc. Public schools are a honey pot if you know how to work them.

Heck, I even suggested to my brother to get in on that No Child Left Behind tutoring program where you set up a little tutoring business and collect big bucks from the federal government. Of course, tutoring programs wouldn't be necessary if kids learned in their public schools.

Stories such as the one below are a dime a dozen and typical of what goes on in the world of public education:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/education/05food.html

Of course, schools need more and more money also; however, it's like a customer in a restaurant telling the waiter the soup is awful and the waiter telling the customer to give him some more money so he can give him another bowl of soup.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/05/education/05school.html

Someone suggested the government give $3,000 per child to each family and let the parents decide how they want to spend it on education in a free market. Of course, corrupt people will use that money to their advantage; however, it wouldn't be any more corrupt than what goes on today and the control is in the hands of the parents.