...we shouldn't use children as cannonballs and/or decorations.
Soon to be former Scranton School District (SSD) Greg Popil wants to send all of the students in the district to Harrisburg to protest for higher state funding. You can read about it HERE. This is a horrible idea on multiple levels:
- How can a financially distressed school district afford to send 10,000 kids and teachers on a four hour round trip?
- What happens to those kids who don't want to go?
- What happens if parents don't want their kids used as political decorations?
- Just where would you put 10,000 kids in Harrisburg?
- How do you feed 10,000 kids in Harrisburg?
Speaking of points, here's mine: It's not the job of children to obtain fair funding for the SSD. That's the job of the adult members of the Pennsylvania Legislature, individuals who should have known that this has been an issue for years, but yet have allowed it to continue (by way of background, the SSD receives far less money from Pennsylvania than other comparable school districts). So far they have failed, miserably I might add, to solve this issue and yet basically no one in any position of authority has been publically willing to call them out on their horrible performance. I get that these are powerful individuals, but I can't help but see the irony of students being evaluated on their work but yet we don't want to evaluate the adults on theirs.
Am I being too hard on our elected officials? Is it not their fault that the Pennsylvania Legislature is dominated by members of another political party?
My answers to the above questions are "No" and "Too Bad". I'm sorry that this is a tough problem to solve. However, Pennsylvania's legislatures are among the best paid in the country. It's time they earned their keep.
Some think that sending kids to Harrisburg to protest the SSD's state funding would be a great lesson in civics. I think an even better lesson in civics would be for our local legislators...both from the PA House and the PA Senate...to explain to the students why they are unable to solve this seemingly simple problem and why other elected officials believe that they are worth less in funding than students from, say, Erie Pennsylvania.
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