• Do schools needlessly spend money?
    172 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Wake;32834602]lol screw you, here our football team (i play) has to use 11 year old jerseys and equipment. We once used 'throwback' jerseys that weren't reproductions of what used to be worn, but the actual uniforms from 1982. Our stuff was older than we were![/QUOTE] well our foot ball team was number 1 in the state that year and 2nd the next year, so i guess it depends on how good they are.
Yea, teachers complain they aren't paid enough while schools go off and blow money out the ass on projects that benefit nobody in a significant way. My university has had a parking problem since anybody still alive can remember, yet every time new parking is installed it is made dorm-space only, making more parking for the part of the student body that isn't having parking problems. The areas that commuter students can park are the [B]same[/B] areas that student tour guests park, and since the tours are held multiple times a week for most of the first semester, almost all of the available parking is taken, and than the second semester bad weather takes up a solid fourth or more of the parking. All the while, fatass campus cops drive around ticketing people who are forced to park in 'illegal' spots because they have to get to class and ALL of the parking is taken. Don't worry though, they opened up another half-empty dorm with PLENTY of parking there! Good thing I've learned to adapt and have scheduled my classes so early I'm there and leaving by the time people start clogging up the parking lots.
[QUOTE=silentjubjub;32834935]Meanwhile in Texas, every school district's budget has been snipped.[/QUOTE] Same thing here in Pennsylvania. Particularly my school district. >_<
They spent our money on a fuckload of Ipads that teachers never use. Also pointless surveys that we don't get anything out of. So yes they are needlessly spending money and then asking for it at PTA meetings.
My university offers free nicotine patches, pills, gum, and counseling. They took a whole year to build a sidewalk. They claim the fire that occurred in our library will cost $1 million to repair, when the fire was put out instantly. In short, yes. All I want is a new fine arts building with a recital hall that actually sounds good, but I suppose nicotine gum will have to do.
I think the best purchase my school ever made was the enormous flatscreen TV they put in the lunch room. What did they do with it? They played a 2 minute picture slideshow of recent events over and over, all day long. Meanwhile, we sat and ate crappy meals that were massively overpriced.
They get the money from tech grants usually, it can't be used on other things. Not to say they don't waste.
[QUOTE=rosar0980;32830912]I've noticed that, sometimes, schools needlessly spend assloads of money. They'll buy something that they don't need, and be saying that they don't have enough money for other things. For example, this year my school district bought EVERY teacher MacBooks and iPads, but they had to cut busing to get children who have been identified as gifted (insanely smart) to where a gifted class takes place. By every teacher, I mean EVERY. They got the chorus director this stuff, the gym teacher got this too. They don't have a need for it. So, do you think that schools, in general, spend needless money?[/QUOTE] What's sad is that they could have saved an literal assload of money buying proper fucking laptops from Dell or HP, and still have money for the bus funding. In your school's case, it was an idiot decision definitely. Seriously, a $3000 MacBook is about as powerful as an HP Pavilion Laptop and the latter [I]costs a third of the former[/I]...
Most schools have a set amount per category. Such as technology, furniture, and so on. They can't use technology money elsewhere so they buy things such as new computers, smartboards, iPads, etc.
My school district just spends their whole budget basically. A nice thing though is that in the woodshop there's a shit ton of wood to use, and I'm in electric guitar building making an electric bass, and there were a lot of nice woods to choose from. All we had to pay for were the hardware, everything else was covered by the school. It's nice having a principle who has an interest in woodworking.
Yes, at least IMO. My school just bought 1000 iPads that are basically never used except for a day or two in the year, but they had to cancel our tech classes because the computers they have weren't powerful enough to edit videos.
My school has a bunch of Smartboards, but the classes that could really benefit from them, such as my engineering class, don't get them. They also bought an iMac for some tech lab class for doing video editing shit with iMovie or something.
My former school spent money to buy about 20 new computers, only about 5 of which were working by the end of the week. They also bought projectors which noone knew how to use and some of those smart boards which never worked. Meanwhile, the toilets have doors hanging by one hinge, or no door at all, the walls are literally rotting away, graffiti covers every surface, and they have no soap. And as someone else mentioned, air conditioning was running all the time and the heaters were all broken.
fuck, my school's been trying to pass a funding levy for 17 years, they had to basicly sneek the funds for the elementry buildings out of the budget so they could get the kids out of the ASBESTOS LINE 100 year old buildings that were condemned litteraly the year after they moved out mean while they have about a dozen smart boards lying around because the teachers are too retarted to use them, while they are sent to a seminar about every month on how to use these stupid things i got a physics teacher who had to call down the head librarian because her projecter lense is dirty and she's afraid to open it up. shit my mom's a librarian, i can rebuild a projector with my eyes closed at this point not to mention the heat is on when its about 85 out and then its off whenever it drops below 40, the middleschool is older than my house, ive litteraly found a pamphlet from when my housing development was put in in the 50s showing it, my highschool is 50 years old, and we're not getting a new one ever. they can't afford a stop light so about 5 or 6 people have died at the turn into the school because its a left across a very buisy road with people driving 60+ mph in a 55 mph road around a hairpin turn i had days where i had to stay outside the building in 20 degree weather with snow, because they have no busing, my nearest ride is half an hour away, and you can't stay in the building after school, and now the fine arts programs are being threatened every year even though we are an award winning band,choir, and art program. since ive been there they've replaced the computers in the library about 6 times, and im only a senior now, while the middleschool had machines running windows 95 and windows 98, they cancled computer classes because the teacher died and they couldnt hire a new one and they only rly spend government grants because the tax payers pay like nothing for the schools and the ohio tax laws are shit, and the even the ohio supreme court won't change them. to raise funds a school has to publicly say they are going broke, and then put a levy up on the ballot.... even in the 1980s they couldnt get a levy passed for upgrades to the schools. the building im in was built to have AC in mind but because of cheepass voters, they ran out of money, so theres about half the building without windows, and on the 90 degree days in the spring, you can litteraly cook eggs in there they bought laptops for the teachers my freshman year, they were all dead the next year, so they got the teachers pc.... then the next year they got them new dell xps's with 25 inch HD monitors, and they got a stack of about 50 netbooks from IBM, yet the netbooks just sit in the library, u can use them on a desk, but theyre bogged down with fuckin win 7 so it takes 20 minutes to do anything on them while the teachers get all this new tech, we can't even have an ipad or electronic device of anykind in school to help us because its "cheating" and u can get it taken away and put in the office, which gets things stolen from it all the time.... ya im raving against my school district, 145 more days of this shit, woo hoo
My school replaced all the library computer with iExpensive hardware as well as purchase a completely new computer lab full of this obsolete and expensive crap.
My old school spent 3 years and three fucking THOUSAND dollars to get a patch of grass put in (about 30ft x 40ft) then another 2000 dollars later on trees. we weren't allowed anywhere near either, and they were removed shortly after. our history textbooks also said that Columbus founded america and mentioned god :suicide:
My last school had horrible funding-- we ran out of paper in March and they couldn't pay for more. Also, they had no a/c or heating in some of the classrooms. My current one is much better, but they don't waste money. I guess the funding depends on where you are (I'm in the horrible state of Arizona, also known as Sandland).
My school bought over 10,000 dollars worth of plasma screen TVs to put up in the hallways. They're never on and they serve no purpose. So yes, schools [b]DO[/b] waste money.
My school got new computers recently- Dell Optiplex 780s- big upgrade I guess since the old ones had been there since I was in 2nd grade in 2002/3. Though they're still using XP SP1 on every fucking machine. They also just bought around 20 Macs that they put in the library for a few days and are now sitting in a storage room for an indefinite period of time because they had issues integrating them into the network for some reason. [editline]17th October 2011[/editline] Oh, and new bleachers that weren't needed. I understood the handicap ramp, but putting in a ramp for your football field doesn't mean you put in new bleachers as well. [editline]17th October 2011[/editline] I forgot that they completely overhauled the football team's locker room because the dumbfucks weren't showering so there was a MSRA outbreak. That was around $9,000 or so.
My school budgets the technical things for drama with thousands and thousands of dollars each year, while other departments stagger to even get textbooks for all the students. I'd say it's retarded, why do we need 400 watt surround sound speaker systems for fucking assemblies and the odd (crappy) band?
No they dont in some ways Yes but someways no Most of the time theres a Stupid kid that walks down the steps and falls and breaks bones and mess and then he starts crying to his mom and dad when there is a a safety sign right beside the stairs then the parents are always protective and go run there mouth to the school the school do not give in to there commands and they Sue the School for there DUMB kid and then they win and get there 10 thousand dollars out of the schools pocket so then KIDS cant get books paper or utensils or EVEN teachers and kids end up on the Streets as a Hobo Because a little fat kid made a mistake walking down the stairs. Thumps up if i have a point
A teacher once told me that classroom doors at my old school cost over $10,000 a piece.
After seeing multi-million dollar gyms, stadiums, softball fields, tennis courts and tracks yeah it's pretty obvious education isn't a main priority. Not that it ever was, public schools are about public image. If they were about education, someone would have actually developed a system that made fucking sense decades ago.
The problem is that if the schools don't spend every last cent that they're given their budget get's cut the next year. So they spend it on stupid things they don't even need.
My school can't needlessly spend because it gets barely enough funding so as to buy unimportant things - In fact the recent small gym at my school had lots of funding from the volunteers who operate my schools' canteen. The only thing I believe that has been needlessly spent was the smart boards that we use. Sure, teachers like plugging their laptops into them and getting the kids to write down what appears on the screen, but they can do the exact same thing with a projector. I've never been in a class that have used a smart board for its full purpose. In fact, my school only needs one room with a smart board as only one class I know of actually makes use of the smart board alot.
[QUOTE=Alan Ninja!;32835943]I think the best purchase my school ever made was the enormous flatscreen TV they put in the lunch room. What did they do with it? They played a 2 minute picture slideshow of recent events over and over, all day long. Meanwhile, we sat and ate crappy meals that were massively overpriced.[/QUOTE] My school did the exact same thing except the flatscreen was in the corridor outside the headteacher's office. Said headteacher also got a load of fancy new glass furniture for his office. I used to say next thing he'll be getting a hot tub installed in there too. Our canteen food looked so disgusting and was overpriced and our supplies were getting worse. I wondered why they couldn't send some of that money our way to help with this stuff and apparently it's money they are given that is allocated to certain uses. If that's true then why does all the money seem to get allocated to the teacher's offices and pointless technology?
Our school has so little money they use used paper that usually has some random shit on the other side. And they also have these fluorescent lights that have two tubes per light, but one tube is taken out to save power. And they don't heat the school until it gets really cold outside so school is like +10C most of the time. We have to sit in jackets to not freeze. But they say teachers are getting damn crazy salaries.
[QUOTE=Mr. Someguy;32838325]A teacher once told me that classroom doors at my old school cost over $10,000 a piece.[/QUOTE] Are they those big iron doors put in after Columbine
My old school's restroom stalls? Nope. Some asshole kicked them down and it took the school 4 FUCKING YEARS to replace it. Meanwhile, all teachers get new Macbook Airs.
My school has a computer lab full of Macs. And they're only used for photo editing and typing lessons. This can easily be done on a comparable Windows machine that costs at least half as much.
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