Comments on: Decatur School Board Raises Millage Rate

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 04:12:18 +0000

@Andisheh, et al: You’re all kidding yourselves. We should congratulate ourselves for a 7% increase? Since I’ve moved to Decatur (which had great schools at the time) my taxes have risen over 100%. I’ve also witnessed a city spend money like no other. It sometimes seems like every square inch has been renovated (sometimes twice) without any regard to the impact on its citizens.

Personally I’m appealing my latest appraisal and working toward selling my house. Of more import to you, though, I’m no longer telling people Decatur is someplace you ought to consider living. I love the city, but they clearly have a different vision for the future than I do. I want to enjoy life–not struggle to get by.

By: Karass

Karass — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:51:02 +0000

So you are not talking about current CSD teachers? That was my interest.

By: Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:30:37 +0000

Good grief, Karass . . . do you have a job?

My figure wasn’t derived with the same care you took to come up with yours. I just counted up teachers, remembered how many stunk, and divided one figure by the other. Of course, my recollection of school experiences is crowded out by plenty of other joyful debris left over from 20 years of child-rearing, but I think my figure, for our experience, is pretty accurate.

The number of truly excellent teachers, however, far exceeds the number of hacks.

By: Bobby

Bobby — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:16:03 +0000

BB knows what is good for you and thus works tirelessly to remove such senseless burdens.

By: Karass

Karass — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:00:35 +0000

I just did a rough analysis of my children’s experience, counting each elementary school teacher experience as one student-year, and above that level, weighting each year with one of the teachers in the five main subjects (math, science, language arts, social studies, and Spanish) as .2 student-year, and came up with only 8.8% of our teachers who I think “chose the wrong line of work”. It would be a more complicated analysis if I factored in weighting for “excellent” vs. “good enough” but the latter distinction varies a lot by student and class composition, compared to “chose the wrong line of work”, which would get more agreement among parents. The numbers for CSD teachers would still look darn good.

By: Karass

Karass — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:41:07 +0000

Current CSD teachers?

By: Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:37:09 +0000

I’ve begun adding “per Moose” to most of my conversations. Adds gravitas.

By: Suspicious Package

Suspicious Package — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:35:33 +0000

I don’t know what my kids’ teachers earned, but I can tell you at least 20 percent of them chose the wrong line of work.