PLATFORM : Teaching Is a Job

While the idea (is) well-intentioned, such programs inevitably degrade the professionalism of public education. Decentralization of large school districts may be a longer-term solution--reducing administrative overhead and enabling smaller systems to more closely reflect their immediate communities.

I feel that a person who is going to be working with children should have some kind of training to do so. I don’t think just anybody off the street, no matter how well-intentioned they are, can come in and successfully work with children. There’s a lot more to teaching than meets the eye. If it’s a volunteer program where perhaps they have certain professional level requirements--like retired teachers, for instance, or retired businessmen or professional people who have some kind of credibility, and not just people who walk in off the street--maybe that would be all right. It’s hard enough to maintain security on the campuses right now.

Decentralization would be a thing I would recommend, but I don’t see it happening. A more workable alternative would be to put more money into education and keep our class sizes reduced. This semester, the school board made an error in their calculations (for staffing) an elementary school in the Studio City area, and the ratio of students to teachers was down. You want to know something funny? The kids have been learning! They are responding real well, but that’s going to be changed next semester when they go back to the old way.