Reply to WAPO article about sever FFX school budget cuts

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[quote=Anonymous]And is it even 9.6 million that would be saved? Teacher expenditures seem to be a line item at 4.9 million.

Presumably, if AAP didn't exist, you'd need that 4.9 million to hire teachers in all the base schools for the greater number of kids.

I think it may make sense to talk about changes to AAP for various reasons, e.g. are too many kids being pulled into AAP such that it really dilutes the gen ed classes, etc..., but I'm not sure budget reasons seem substantial.  Saving $5-10 million to slash what is a popular program that actually attracts people to FCPS and is at least educationally focused seems like a bad move -- and its proponents seem to mostly have sour grapes about AAP. Again, I think changes to AAP should be considered but it is not exactly an area of tremendous waste financially.

I would much prefer dropping FLES personally, although the school board has apparently said that's a nonstarter.  I think FLES sounds good on paper - it's a very multicultural, international area and everyone likes the idea of kids learning foreign languages early.  The problem is that they don't really learn much of anything with one hour a week.  My kids get FLES at their school and it is more or less a waste or time.

The problem is that there doesn't appear to be that much "fat" in FCPS' budget.  Certainly, there may have been money wasted during past years (hello, Gatehouse), but, overall, if you want a world class school system, you don't want to be cutting art, music, FLES, gifted, etc...Garza said the cuts are going to be "to the bone" and it's hard to sustain excellence for long with that kind of austerity.  Bottom line - more money is needed.

The school board has also said athletic fees are a nonstarter.  Again, I kind of thought that made sense.  No doubt it would hurt certain kids who can't afford the fees, but I wondered if private businesses might be able to step in at certain schools to underwrite the fees, etc...[/quote]

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