NC Legislators Shafting Education

Pretty soon, if you want a decent education for your child in the state of North Carolina, you might have to come to grips with the concept of homeschooling.

Not that our teachers are incapable. Our Daughter just graduated high school and received, for the most part, an excellent education that has prepared her well for college. Our sons will be in high school soon enough and then heading off to college themselves, also with heads full of knowledge thanks to their many dedicated teachers (and despite the few who shouldn't be teaching). They are nearly beyond the point at which the vivisection of public education by the North Carolina Legislature can impact them directly. Until, of course, they have their own children.

The disdain for public education by the Republican leadership of North Carolina -- Republicans control both the House and Senate with commanding majorities, in addition to the Governorship --  is palpable. From salaries, to support, to supplies, to benefits, to basic respect, the state of North Carolina is failing our children by failing our schools.

Competitive teacher salaries? Who needs them? In fact, North Carolina celebrates bloated middle management over the value of line-level teachers and school staff.

For instance, the NC Department of Public Instruction hires people in at salaries with a basement of $57,000 to serve as Education Testing/Accountability Consultants. Qualified applicants could draw a starting salary north of $90,000. According to ncpublicschools.org, the basement salary for a Bachelor-degree certified teacher is $33,000. A similarly certified teacher with 25 or more years of experience qualifies for a maximum starting salary of only $50,000. That's a $22,000-$40,000 gap between the teachers charged with directly educating our children and the number crunchers dreaming up tests to measure the effectiveness of our teachers.

And it isn't as though North Carolina employs merely a handful of Education Consultants. A quick search using a handy tool provided by the News & Observer shows almost a full eight screens -- 197 individual positions -- of employees with the title Education Consultant Levels I, II or III. Perhaps, in a state made up of 100 counties, 197 consultants on various topics of public education isn't too extreme, but it makes me wonder why we then employ 76 Education Program Directors who are supposed to serve as the lead authorities for their designated topics. Why do we have more than double the number of consultants than actual directors, all of them drawing salaries beyond the reach of even the most seasoned teacher?

So, what is a state government to do when all this money gets tossed at education yet our overall testing scores consistently put North Carolina close to last place in the Union? Punish the schools, of course. The bloated middle management at the Department of Public Instruction, all too frequently mirrored at the local district levels, couldn't possibly be to blame. Could it? We need all those people milling about, pushing their own agendas, developing new ways to learn math, developing new tests to justify their high salaries. What would we do without them?

Oh, that's right.

We might be able to fund higher salaries for teachers. We might be able to hire additional teacher assistant positions. We might be able to buy proper textbooks. We might be able to fund modern computer labs. We might be able to get students out of trailers and into proper buildings. We might be able to fund personalized reading programs that target the needs of students rather than implementing a bastardized form of the Lexile program which, by its own descriptive content at its website, is meant to be a tool for teachers, not a systematic approach to governing all reading programs. We might be able eliminate the need for teachers and local administrators to help justify the pet programs of their higher ups and, instead, offer meaningful feedback on the effectiveness of tools offered to them without fear of political retribution.

There's a whole lot we might be able to accomplish if our Legislators stopped playing politics with our tax dollars and focused on funding the learning process.




2015 Mark Feggeler

Mystery Mail Bingo

Just a few months ago, our mail delivery was perfect. Beyond perfection, even.

Our mail arrived each and every day at the same time of day for seven-and-a-half years. Packages that were marked "Do Not Bend" weren't. Packages too large for our mailbox were hand-delivered to our door. Packages and parcels belonging to other people were not mixed in with ours. We were spoiled.

At least, that's how the United States Post Office must have considered us, because the new year brought the announcement of a change. Our mail carrier, Kim, was retiring and another would take her place.

What I've learned over the past few weeks is that the Post Office for the village in which we live does not directly hire employees as mail carriers. Why? I don't know, and neither does anyone at our local Post Office. Someone, ages ago, determined that's the way it should be and that is how it has remained from farther back than living memory appears to serve.

Instead, a contract specialist two states away in Maryland solicits and reviews bids from anyone literate enough to complete a form and who also happens to be interested in managing one of the many local delivery routes in our area. Past experience is supposed to be taken into consideration, but in this case it doesn't seem to have been a priority.

These days, our mail delivery is one of the greatest mysteries going. A local bookie could clean up taking bets on all aspects of service:

• Time of mail delivery;
• Percentage accuracy of mail received;
• Whether or not you received any mail at all;
• Whether or not outgoing mail left in your mailbox for the carrier to take with her remains in your mailbox at the end of the day;
• The number of days outgoing mail remains untouched in your mailbox;
• Number of days you receive mail without a single piece of it being addressed to you or any other member of you family;
• The number of bills you neglect to pay because you never received your statements;
• The number of confidential documents (bank statements, credit card applications, car registration renewals, medical bills, W-2 forms, etc.) you receive that are not addressed to you;
• Whether or not the carrier understands why mailboxes have those little flags on them;
• How many mailboxes the carrier runs down before she acknowledges having run over any;
• How many pieces of mail are lodged between the cushions of the backseat in the mail carrier's car on any given day;
• Whether or not the mail carry can read.

You see? The possibilities are endless!

In response to the postal mayhem, I'm doing my part by calling to complain every few weeks to keep our local postmaster apprised of how abysmally horrendous mail service continues to be and spreading the name and mailing address of the contract specialist in Maryland to all who live along our delivery route.

I would post it here, but it's probably illegal and I'd end up getting subpoenaed, or audited, or cavity searched, or some silly thing like that. So just shoot me an email and I'll respond back with it so you can write the guy a letter, too. Just make sure you don't leave it in your mailbox for the carrier to take.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler