Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

RVAnus t1_j6mqlhb wrote

Reply to comment by AndThenThereWasQueso in Richmond School board member proposes closing five schools to more efficiently use budget by Charlesinrichmond

I don't think you're necessarily wrong here, but I think the catch is that there are currently no functional alternatives. The result is that city schools gets stuck in an endless feedback loop of poor performance.

3

AndThenThereWasQueso t1_j6mqyrz wrote

Lots more poor performance when more teachers start to leave because of things like this.

6

RVAnus t1_j6n6nz0 wrote

I agree, and good teachers are where the rubber meets the road in education. Good teachers deserve good pay, good facilities, and good administration. All of these cost money that isn't there without full, or close to full, utilization. And even if you could snap your fingers and get full utilization, there are the challenges of years of deferred maintenance due to years of chronic underfunding. There aren't easy answers and there are way more paths that lead to failure than success. The only way out is to honestly acknowledge the challenges and tradeoffs and come up with a balanced solution with the correct incentives for long term success.

4