How much education spending is enough?

To the editor:

We have a number of candidates running with the promise to fully fund education, to make sure that our schools get all the money they need. I would like to know just how much is enough.

According to an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette dated Aug. 14, 2018; the average elementary and high school receives $6,591 per student. And according to the 2018 tuition and fees graph published by the state, a year at the University of Iowa would only cost $9,266.

There is only a difference of $2,675 between the dollars spent to educate a kindergartener and a freshman in college. Does anyone else see a problem here? While I understand that the whole $6,591 is not spent just on the student, because I have a friend who taught in the mid-1980s. He told me that he received $80 per student to spend for supplies and other teaching materials. The amount per student was around $4,000. So what does that extra $2,500 get us?

I just want to know when is there enough money? When we spend $8,000 per student? $10,00? When we close yet another school? Because that is what we are told with every school closing, that it is to save money.

So where is all this saved money going to? The classrooms? Administrative costs? It sure isn't going into education programs that will actually turn out a critical thinking, well rounded individual.

Maybe we should go back to every teacher doing their own thing instead of everyone following the same model. The first allows much more flexibility than the second. And maybe, instead of dumping more money, our Legislature look at how money is allocated in schools. The current system that is used, the 'use it or lose it” system, seems to invite a lot of waste.

Doesn't it make more sense to allow teachers to stock their classrooms with needed supplies? To reward them instead of punish them because they didn't use enough reams of paper or they liked a certain book and didn't change it the next year?

Everyone with multiple children know that no two children are the same. And so, no two classrooms of kids are exactly the same, nor are they the same year to year. So why do we expect teachers to spend the same year to year? To teach the same?

Since schools are now run like a business, shouldn't they have to explain cost overruns? And how many businesses do you know that can keep going back to their investors, asking for more and more money without significant improvements to their product or operating systems? So how about it candidates, how much is enough?

- Dianne Brandt, Fairfield