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Olympia School District

Submitted by dufnej on Sat, 07/12/2008 - 10:30pm.

I have been following the issues with the Olympia School District and am disappointed in the outcome of the budget decisions. Community members, parents, and students took the time to show up for the forums and voice their priorities. Keeping teaching positions was the overwhelming top priority. This priority was ignored and new administrators (hired out of the reserve funds to begin with) were kept at the expense of teaching positions. The end result is larger classes and less flexibilty for class offerings at the school level, due to larger class sizes. This means raising class sizes in OSD for the second time in less than 5 years.

I appreciated the letter to the editor today from Stephen Bray. I hope that educators and parents can come together to correct the trajectory that OSD is racing along.

What are others hearing on this issue? What are the solutions?

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I agree 100%

Submitted by gshafer5571 on Sat, 07/12/2008 - 10:59pm.

I'm an employee of the district. I drive school bus. One of the major issues I have with the proposed budget from the board was to have students within 1 mile either get a parent to drive them or to have them walk. So now we're going to increase traffic on the streets and at the schools. That's going to increase the danger for those students that have to walk. With the ones that have to walk they are in danger not only of the cars on the road but sex offenders. I looked online and found at least 6 level 2 sex offenders within 1 mile radius of Reeves MS. Now the interesting thing is our busses ironically drive within that 1 mile radius to get to the school but the board wants us to pass right but the students that we use to pick up. What I propse instead is get rid of useless field trips to Wild Waves, Zoo, NW Trek, Flight Museum, etc. Reduce the number of trips downtown to Jr Programs. Get rid of transportation for MS athletics. I know for a fact that on the return trips for MS sports there are most of the time 1-5 students and a coach left on the bus. The rest of the students get picked up by parents because the games are so close. Instead of these changes they want to endanger students by making them walk on dangerous streets...OH yeah and ADD A FULL TIME ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDANT. I understand my changes would cost me valuable time on field trips but it would not place students on the street with sex offenders and have them cross streets where people are in a hurry to get to work and not paying attention.

What I propse instead is get

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 6:16am.

What I propse instead is get rid of useless field trips to Wild Waves, Zoo, NW Trek, Flight Museum, etc.

I agree with Wild Waves. Absolutely useless. When I was in middle school I skipped my Wild Waves "tour" and - am able to say - have not been negatively impacted because of this decision (it's crazy what I was thinking about at that age).

The Zoo, Flight Museum, etc. are important, though. The same with sports (I played baseball for one year and soccer for three).

but it would not place students on the street with sex offenders and have them cross streets where people are in a hurry to get to work and not paying attention.

In a strange way, I think it's good for kids to walk to school. Obviously if there's a sex offender in the picture the local law enforcement department should be allowed to handle that, but encouraging responsibility at an early age isn't a bad thing for a child's development.

I agree...

Submitted by gshafer5571 on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 10:09am.

You know like I said I am a bus driver and get to go around on these field trips a lot of times with kids. I honostly don't think the field trips to the zoo and flight museum are that beneficial. The last zoo trip I took all the kids did was walk around the zoo with no set plan. That's it. They went to look at animals not learn about them. I didn't go on any of those field trips when I was in school. I turned out OK I think. You know...there are also books the kids can read about these animals and the history of flight, or how about watching a good documentary in class. Why send them 75-150 miles away (round-trip) paying a driver 8 hours plus at 23 dollars/Hr (including benefits) to walk around the flight museum all day? Not only that but these trips also usually put a driver into overtime because they drive their morning and afternoon route as well. Why not have trips around here instead. State Capitol, local flight museum (small but still informative), Supreme Court Bldg, etc there are a lot of things you can plan for here locally without driving to Seattle and Tacoma. I'm not saying to get rid of MS Sports. I said get rid of transportation for MS sports. There's just not enough students that ride the bus home after a game to send a 75 passenger bus out to Tumwater MS to pick up 2 students and a coach and pay the driver their wage until after 6:30 at night. You know the funny thing you say about letting kids walk to school, there are parents that won't let their kids walk to their bus stop. Parents are constantly calling and complaining to the supervisor to have him ad a stop closer to their house. Now the district thinks the parents are going to let their child walk 1 mile. No, what's going to happen is more parents are going to drive their kids to school and congestion on already jammed streets and cause more wrecks. Riding the bus is proven to be the safest mode of transportation for students per student driven per mile driven.

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