Gubmint Skools Fear the Competition

Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia recently signed into law legislation which makes it easier for charter schools to get funding.

The new law, called HB 881, allows a new state-appointed commission to authorize a charter school's use of a school system's per-pupil funding, including local money — even if the local board did not approve it.

The regular public schools, i.e., government schoolsaren't too happy, and of course in this over-lawyered society we have become, might take the expected next step and challenge the law in court.

Nothing like a little competition to bring out the best in folks, but of course the folks so firmly ensconced in the educational system in the administrative roles, rather then look to see what charter schools do that make them so successful and try to adopt those practices, would rather simply run the charter schools out of town.
If folks would really look at what portion of the school budget in their areas go to pay the salaries of the administrators, which is everybody from the principal on up to county board of education and compare that to what is spent in the classroom to pay the teachers and get school supplies there might be more outrage expressed by the citizens.

In Georgia, when you get your property tax bill it shows you just how much is going to education and how much goes to the county in real property tax. For me the amount targeted to schools is three times as much as what actually goes to the county. Since they have started doing this in Georgia a lot of people have started looking at the budget of their local school districts. If you gave people back that money there would be a lot more kids in charter and private schools. Once people started seeing that broken down they realized private school wasn't so expensive after all.

That is the big problem whether talking about Social Security, or Medicare or other taxes taken out of the paycheck, people never see the money so they don't miss it. Imagine if you actually got to bring home every penny of your salary? But that is a topic for another post.

Update: Gov Perdue also signed into law the bill whcih gives gun owners who have concealed carry permits greater freedoms in regards to where they can bring their gun.

Governor Sonny Perdue on Wednesday signed legislation allowing guns in restaurants, on public transportation and in parks.

The new law would only apply to the roughly 300,000 Georgians that have concealed weapons permits. Those permit holders have passed criminal background checks.

All politics are local

Sometimes on this blog we talk about national politics and sometimes you just have to give a nod to local politics. That is the purpose of this post, but it is also to hopefully make more people aware of the political races going on in their area. I have been saying for a long time that I do not intend to vote for any incumbent this time around and while this race is not in my district, it is close.

The Georgia Sixth district is currently representated by a guy named Tom Price but his time around he has a challenger, Mike Boyce.

Mr Boyce is a Marine veteran just back from 10 months as a contractor in Iraq and has a son currently serving in the Marines.

They, Price and Boyce are both Republicans, but if I had a vote in his district I would certainly vote for him, Boyce. One to get rid of an incumbent and two because this is someone who has intimate knowledge of the challenges we face in the Middle East.