Potter’s Field and SB51.

Charles Potter has just introduced an amendment to SB51 striking the 3.0 average entry requirement. He says it discriminates against a black child who struggled hard though High School to get a 2.99… The toady for the administration is arguing that there is a clause allowing 10% of those not to be above target. He could slid in under that…  Potter’s response is that  what if that child was on the cusp, and after 10% were in, he was next and would be denied.

The administration is saying that this bill is to raise standards  and if you don’t raise standards what’s the point of having this bill.

Potter is dancing around the topic, but is essentually saying this is a bad bill and needs to be voted down if it doesn’t have this amendment, and finally, finally, debate is getting out on the floor,  The administration’s toadies are panicked… They’re wearing the stone expression face.. 

Now points we made are poking holes in the bill, but the speaker is reigning discussion to the amendment….

Any discussion of this bill is good… 

Fact is,  Potter is correct.  This bill certainly does discriminate against  wanna be teachers who studied their whole career, and with so many strikes against them, ARE proud of their 2.5 record… AND THEY SHOULD BE…

Driving In The Wedge

Diane picked up that the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting Wall Street investors are getting a little shaky with UNO, a quasi-government-private partnership that was supposed to rapidly expand charter schools in and around Chicago.

An expansion that was to be partially funded by $37.5 million of Wall Street’s money.

A crack has just opened in the impenetrable fortress wall. A pinpoint of light is shining through.

The easiest way to stop the charter school process may not be through legislation, but by an actions far simpler to achieve: Make charter schools unprofitable… A philanthropist will invest in a charter if it earns no money. But Wall Street investor certainly will not.

That is the problem they have with Chicago.. Chicago points the way on how to organize and hit Wall Street where it hurts…

A. Picket Charter Schools as unfair to Labor. Who wants to sign their children up in a school with picket signs outside protesting the destruction of the middle class by Wall Street? What kind of status symbol would that be, to have to tell your boss where your kids go to school? An embarrassment, that’s what.

B. Call state legislators to complain about anything negative you can find out about the “new” charter school. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. Truly, you are doing that lawmaker a favor; you are saving his butt from being blindsided by parents back home. All he hears from lobbyists in his office, is how great charter schools theoretically are. Reality is far different…

C. Threat of unionizing all Charter School Teachers… And why not? Why not enlist Charter School teachers and help them get organized to demand higher wages or strike? Aren’t they people too? Why should they work for a lot less than public school teachers, when they could easily be making the same salaries if they would just organize into a union, as do public teachers? What Charter School teacher would say no to higher wages? What Charter School Teacher could say no to higher wages… It is time to aggressively recruit.

D. Investigate all transactions to insure no embezzlement. Check over state funding to Charters which is published and look aggressively for corruption, nepotism, and anything to taint the charter school in bad light, thereby jeopardizing state funding…

Arne Duncun said… we would learn a lot from Chicago… and he was right.

In short, UNO obtained $98 million from the state legislature to build new charters. It turns out that $8.5 million of that money went to companies owned by two brothers of UNO’s number 2 official, Miguel d’Escoto. When the scandal broke, he stepped down from his $200,000 job, resulting in then Governor Pat Quinn to halt payment on the balance still owed to UNO…. Investors got worried and question UNO in a conference call, over the scandal, over the unionization of Charter teachers taking place, over the halt of construction on one of the new schools for failure to pay the bills, The governor has suspended payments of the remainder of state money until satisfied that the Charter is performing as promised. And this just in, UNO spokesperson confessed to the Chicago Sun-Times that “future funding may be at stake..”

The lesson here, is that getting a legislator to part with his campaign money coming in, is a lot harder than making Wall Street’s return on investment extremely risky. When Wall Street starts consistently losing money each time it invests in education, it will move on to something more prosperous.

We see what we have to do,…. Now, lets make it happen…

Union leaders. Start pressing charter schools to join.

Bloggers. Start pouring over the balance sheets on line of your nearest Charter School.

Parents. Write you legislator on how much Charter Schools have destroyed the educational experience for you child…

Yes we can do this… We can learn a lot from Chicago.

Vote Like A Goat

Today is School Board Elections…Polls are open 10-8…  If anyone is sponsored by Markell or Rodell or RTTT or WSFS, don’t vote for them.. If anyone is sponsored by DSEA, they are on the students side. They are safe.

So go out and vote like a goat… Be…  B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-D

Sermon On The Mount

Bottom line in all cases I think everyone here would agree, is that we do what is best for the children. In certain cases  in which you may find yourself in,  a charter school scenario seems better to achieve that, than that situation’s public school alternative.

I guess the opposing point to your argument,  would be that instead of allowing charter schools to siphon funds away from public school systems, hard changes are now needed to be implemented inside the public schools. Raise the revenue, invest in quality, and make the public school system move itself forward to do what is best for the children.

Then, the charter’s group counter-argument to THAT…, is:   that is exactly what existed before charter schools were brought in! What you suggest didn’t happen then! Instead as situations got worse, administrators were told to deal with it; use good judgment. Charters are what brought in the necessary competition and now therefore they are responsible for today reforming public schools.

The retort for THAT, would be of what I spoke before:  that too many mouths at the trough make thin pigs. No one benefits from too many hungry mouths fighting over too scarce resources…

And that is where this argument seems to lie. Am I seeing our differences now as question of perspective? Sort of like from where one is looking, sort of determines how one sees this problem?

Let me elaborate. charter supporters speak of charters making positive inroads on children lucky enough to attend their schools … So from the perspective of those particular kids (our number one priority) the charter moving in and siphoning resources from a neighborhood dying entity, is a very good thing… Seen from that perspective I’ll agree….

However,… as a society one has to have the broad approach. One has to look for the Ying that corresponds to the Yang… In this case, that Ying would be…. what is happening to those children NOT being put into a charter school?

The answer is….. drumroll…… that they are doing worse then when public schools alone ruled the educational fiefdom. And shockingly, students at charter schools seem across the whole to be doing worse than when public schools alone ruled the educational landscape as well….
And this is where we have to be careful… we can say, look at this Charter… see how well it is doing?

But we must first know … is it doing well comparatively because it is teaching superlatively, or because the students it takes in were originally more highly motivated to succeed in the first place? Had those same students been in public schools, would they  now be boosting the public school’s results upward?

So from a theoretical perspective, it appears that the only sane way to determine whether charters have a positive or a negative impact upon societal education as a whole, is to use the numerical data to see how well students are responding now.

Doing so is a lot more complicated than this upcoming explanation, but using a simpler model will allow me to communicate it more easily. … Think if we were to give each student a number based on whether they graduated or not, and make those numbers either a +1 for graduating, or a -1 for not…. and then add up all of an entire city’s students, we would have a number for that district. We could then compare that number with numbers of the past, and also have the future come back to compare with us…

If with Charter schools in the equation, our success (graduation) number for ALL combined Public and Charter students is lower than it was before the time that Charters came in, then despite lots of  individual success stories, the concept of starting charters is over the total system, … disruptive… On the other hand, if with Charters our comprehensive success (graduation) number is higher than it was before Charters came in……. then thank heavens, someone brought in charter schools…..

Does that make sense?   If we took all of Delaware and compared all the numbers of students who meet the graduation standards before Charter Schools came in to disrupt, and compared that with all the numbers of students who meet the graduations standards now, … we would see, flat out, if that disruption was a positive one, or a negative one!  Is that clearer?

I think what has always quantified the difference in perspective between the two camps,… charter versus non-charter, is that one side is adding the negative numbers into the equation, and the other side is strictly only looking at the positive spectrum…

As in positive: … “look this kid was failing but now in a charter he is graduating… Isn’t that great”. Versus,“look over here, these two kids are dropping out of public school while one person graduates from a charter, that’s a combined score of a negative one… We should switch priorities, fund public education and then at least, should the charter wither and fail, we’d have a score of a positive one at the very least. Positive three if the kid in the charter succeeds!”

And if I’m a good writer, I’ve led you right to the solution that should be forming in your mind right now as you read this… The real solution is to refund education, period; allowing for both the successful existing charters to continue, and for adequately funding public education to provide increased opportunities to close the gaps still existing among our students. Remember again, our goal is our children.

Public education thrived post second World War! Only when the tax revolt began and people even considered lowering property taxes and cutting spending, did quality levels of education start declining. We once had a very robust educational system… How can we tell? Our nation today is the byproduct of that intergenerational system stretching beginning and end across the 20th Century.

But somewhere in the 80′s we began to make a conscious choice as a society that we would benefit more if we gave the wealthy more wealth and gave public education and other things… less..

Somewhere in the past we as a society made a conscious choice to allow our nation’s leaders to put less money into education, and keep more for themselves and their friends…. ( of course in fairness, we thought we were going to get some of it too…. Psyche!)

And the longer and longer I look at today’s educational problem and all the millions of pieces that need to be glued back together, the more and more I come to the inevitable conclusion that we simply really need to take that money back, invest it where it should have been all along, and still, keep that same fire in our bellies which we have now, and make education fun again so that great things can happen…..

Just like it probably did for each and every one of us… After all, we’re reading blogs for heaven’s sakes… Where on earth did THAT curiosity come from? Does that make us all sort of weird? lol.

Why We Should All Be Against Raising Teacher’s Standards

I’d never thought I’d write that.  How could anyone in their right mind be against raising teacher’s standards… After all it is our kids we are talking about who will suffer….

Exactly,  Passing SB 51 with S/A 1 Amendment attached, will cause our kids to suffer. That’s how I can write that. Otherwise I’d be full force behind this bill just as was every senator who voted for it….

You ask, how can raising standards on teachers, hurt our children?

I will ask you back;  ”How would you like to take your brand new car you just purchased to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop and have him work it over? How could that possibly hurt your car?”

Basically that’s what this law does for education. It is as if we passed a law for cars that said every new car purchased had to be re-certified by Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop.  The entire premise on this auto legislation lies in this one single question: gee, who is Joe?

If Joe is someone who is the world’s best mechanic, factory trained by every car manufactured, a man or woman who can analyze myriads of problems by just with listening with a fine-tuned ear, then maybe this bill could possibly be ok.  But if Joe has no knowledge of electronic computers, but learned his mechanics back in the days of steel and oil, and is a complete loss when he sees a car with no distributer cap,  then taking your car that runs perfectly to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop, can damage your car pretty darn bad.

And THAT is the problem with SB 51…  We don’t know who Joe is….

What we do know, is that our car is purring perfectly, heck we just bought it, everything was tuned at the factory.  Since it is straight from the factory, it is running very well,  no play in the wheel, clean car smell, all items are working, and even our factory tells us to make sure we take it back to a “factory approved shop” for all repairs in order not to void the warranty….  But our government is making us take it to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop.… And we still don’t know who Joe is?

And we are not too enthralled by all the junk cars piled up in its back lot…….

That is what is wrong with SB 51….

Our great educational  training program that is functioning very well, is going to be tested and inspected by someone who doesn’t know crap…

That should scare the hell out of every single parent….

The educational system of America over the last 13 years has been disrupted. Good teachers have been fired, to be replaced with bad ones.  Students used to read literature, and now they are handed “packets” and read test questions. Schools that have been opened for a century,  have been closed…. The educational system is in disarray; a disarry that appears to have been forced down from the top.

We’ve all been there… The new boss walks in, and yells “things are going to be different now”.  Some are excited, some are afraid, but this boss is out of control… He arbitrarily fires, can’t hire fast enough, and the  business breaks down.  It becomes broken.  He came into fix, and it got put… into a fix.  So he storms out, blaming all those left for his need to make an exit.  And then everyone is asked to put it back together, and they do, then the next boss is hired…  If you work in America, you’re guaranteed to have  been through this scenario.

We are going to do that with teachers?  Who’s this guy, Joe again?  Is this test going to be made by the same ones that lowered Delaware’s results?  Is this test going to be like those 5th grader tests loaded with 7th grade questions using letters a,b,c in algebraic math?

As that car owner, we have the best educational system bar none.  Delaware educators have among toughest standards in the country. Counting every school, even the most stringent Ivy League schools, the University of Delaware is ranked 37th in the nation. That’s ahead of  Rutgers, Temple, and even Boston University. Delaware State University is solid Tier 2 school.

Currently in Delaware’s educational programs, only one third make it through the tough gauntlet into teaching. All students graduating from UD, DSU, and WU have passed Praxis I and II; have logged hundreds of hours of observation and additional hundreds more hours of supervised teaching under the watchful eye of master teachers in our public schools. Compared to the standards even 10 years ago, new Delaware teachers graduated by these universities are the best prepared to enter the classroom in our history.

Delaware should be pretty damn proud. Instead we appear to be on the verge of committing a rash act full of unintended consequences. Our head is in the sand. Ok, the argument may go…. “If we’re so good, what possiblE harm can befall us if we take our new baby to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop?

Apart from the fact that we do not know who “Joe” is or will be when we get there, there are these reasons. The changes in SB 51/SA-1 actually lower some credentialing standards rather than raise them [see the section on now accepting Composite Scores].

Currently all Delaware student teachers take the Praxis One and the Praxis Two. No pass, no teach. These are the factory cars in the educational equation. There are composed by NCATE, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. This is a very solid organization. If you go to their website right now, you will see that they pre-published their accreditation standards for public view and comments. They also dropped Wesley College’s accreditation for not living up to the standards.

This bill would replace these standards with ones created by the Delaware Department of Education. Returning to the Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop analogy, one has to wonder how a 3 year Phys Ed elementary teacher, can do better than a national organization that accredits schools.

Delaware has the 37th BEST teacher school ranked in the nation. And after this bill is passed, we are going to completely gut our entire program out of all we do so well, and have a 3 year elementary Physical Education Teacher rebuild our entire program from scratch….. One who has never gone through the RTTT testing he inflicts on others? One who quite questionably doesn’t meet the minimum 5 year requirement necessary to be a DOE?

It’s in the bill. that is what it says.

Would we let someone who has never been a doctor create the state’s medical certification program? Would we let a non-lawyer create the state’s Bar exam? Would we let a manager of McDonalds create our state’s nutritional guidelines?

With this administration and this Senate, I really don’t know. We just might, based on what I’m seeing right before me!

So, you are saying you would really take your BMW, Rolls, or Cadillac to Joe The Mechanic’s Auto Shop to be certified to drive it in Delaware? Wouldn’t you be afraid he’d mess it up, especially since it is working rather well right now? Ranked 37th!..

I can hear “Joe” now… “What are all these damn stupid wires for. (Rip,rip,rip) My old Model T never had this crap”…

It’s our kids. We can’t rush this, and this bill has been rushed far too fast through the Senate. The House needs to slow down and debate this one…

We can’t afford to lose our 37th top spot in the nation for which we worked so hard and so long to get….. We got to stop this bill that will make our cars all go to “Joe’s” .

Rebuttal To News Journal Piece Promoting Charters

Kendall Massett wrote a piece in todays News Journal. “It’s time to change the conversation on charter schools.”

The point behind the article was that charter schools do some great things too.

It reminded me of a middle aged executive who fell in love with his secretary, and had carried on an affair over years while maintaining his family status, buttressed with a wife and two sons. Who, now that the news was out was sitting with her on her bed, head in hands, looking at losing all in a divorce settlement, being banned from his kids, losing his job on a morality clause, and now, with no future in front of him, for the first time, accepting his responsibility in what he’d done…. Looking at the tears streaming down his face and through his hands, his young, voluptuous secretary tries to console him… “Well, it’s not ALL bad.. Look at it this way… At least the sex was good…”

Kendall Massett’s assertion that we must continue Charter Schools because some good may come out of it, in itself is a losing argument. It ignores the bad. When making decisions, one can’t ignore the bad.

I have found the best way to explain the “charter school versus public school problem” is with a parable. Go figure, but most people will grasp a parable when facts, figures and numbers roll off their eyes and out their ears.

“Once upon a time, there was a loving single dad. A dad who was blessed with one child. He was poor, still paying off the funeral bills for his former wife and the kid’s mother. But they got along ok. There was enough to live on and that’s what they did. However one thing bothered this dad. Being with only one child, the dad had nothing to compare that child to. He questioned himself. Was this dad doing everything he could for his child? So the dad, had a great idea. He would adopt another son of the same age, so they two could compete together. Which ever was the best, would get rewarded first and through the competition his son would eventually get the best upbringing he possibly could. What the Dad did not figure upon, was that feeding two kids cost more than one. He only had enough to feed one. So he came up with a plan that which ever son did better at running around the block each morning got to eat first, and the other got to eat what was left over. Every morning, rain or shine, at 5:30 am, the race would occur. Knowing what was at stake both sons tried their best. Sometimes one won. Sometimes the other. But the Dad began to grow concerned because he was timing the races. Originally he had to rush to get the food ready before the first one burst in. But over time, the found he had more and more and sometimes plenty of time to set the table before the first would come through the door. For some unknown reason, they were running slower and slower and slower. He invited an expert in to see why? The expert asked what he fed the first kid when they were alone. It amounted to 1000 calories. The expert said… “Ah Ha” You are feeding two people on what you fed one. No matter how much running they do, together they can never do what originally one was able.

Kendall Massett doesn’t cover this issue. Obviously common sense would decree that if we are going to have charter schools, we need to fund them independently and not take away the funds from public schools. Trying to make someone do better with less resources may be possible on a percentage scale, but the overall result, will be a loss. If charter schools want to experiment with private or parochial funding, and people want to go there, excellent. We have choice. Likewise, if we increase taxes on the top 1% just to pay the entire budgets of charter schools so that then we can experiment, great, let’s do it and have choice. But to expect better results on half the calories, is impossible. And that is the expectation of what charters will do.

This study of next door Philadelphia, shows that test scores in Philly were collectively higher when there were NO charter schools, then when there were. Meaning that allowing Charter schools to come in and compete with Philly public schools, lowered Philadelphia’s cumulative test score average…. Simply put, in any other venue when two teams compete, they both have independent sponsors. Splitting ones resources to fund two teams competing against each other, well… common sense tells you that when they go up against other teams whose funding was unlimited… they are going to lose badly…

Finally one other factor in Kendall’s piece that burns. When an scientist does experimentation, he throws out all those episodes where something goes wrong and his hypothesis doesn’t work. When you experiment in education, all that “stuff” you throw out, is our own children.

Uncle Tom Talks To News Journal

Jea Street says of school board elections::… “It’s the teachers!  They have a lock on it! They control ALL the school districts.  You gotta give the unions credit for being aggressive, assertive and effective. But on the other hand you can take the position that it is counter productive. If they control the board, is the board acting in the interests of the students, or the union?”

He then points to Christina School District. WHERE THE STATE WILL LIKELY REVOKE 2.3 MILLION IN RACE TO THE TOP MONEY because the administration and school board refuse to implement a teacher incentive program that matches state requirements. The state wants to promise the money and then find reasons not to give it; they can get results and pay nothing for them, whereas the Christina Board wants to break it down and give it to all the teachers inside those good schools meeting requirements and use it to improve the technology in struggling schools.

Jea Street was the character who wrote a letter demanding the superintendent and members of the school board resign, because they didn’t capitulate to his wishes…

The district responded with a letter of their own, to the parents of all district students, explaining how the boards use of money was infinitely superior to the use proposed by Markell and his toady, Jea Street.

Now I’m generally too busy to deal with the pomposity of those whose function in life is to be noticed…   However, they are often used as was Samuel Jackson’s character in Django, to do the bidding of others.  So they try to pretend they are independent actors, I find it very interesting to trace the strings back to their puppeteers, to see who is pulling them.

This was no mystery.  It was rather easy…   I’ll walk you through….

Notice how the tone is anti- union?  That is your clue.  Who hates unions?   The Delaware State Chamber of Congress for one.  Governor Markell and Alan Levine for two.  Wall Street for three…  i think it is safe to say, particularly in today’s economic climate, that if one is making under $60,000 a year, he or she is probably pro union….  The only people who hate unions, are those with money…  Whether Jea Street does or doesn’t matters little..  He is obviously a toady for one who does….

Jea Street has sold out.  He no longer represents the people in his town. He is looking for his golden ticket…  The true golden ticket for Wilmington’s inner city children, is a good education.  And if teachers didn’t have to test so damn much, those students could be getting a good education right now.  If there were no “strings” attached to RTTT money, those kids in Christina’s city school, could be on broadband today.

I used to think Jea Street was misguided.  With these words almost the exact parroting what one would hear around a Chamber of Commerce dinner, I know he is selling out.   He no longer represents any school child in Wilmington.  He is interested in his own survival.   Good luck to him, but the  children of Wilmington, as all of the Christina Board would attest, are far more valuable to Delaware, than whether Mr. Street hits or misses the “big time.”

Everybody knows that teachers are the front lines of education. No matter what tests RTTT funnels our way, without teachers nothing gets done.  Education completely shuts down.  There is nothing anyone can ever do to start it up, unless the teachers agree to be a part of it.  Jea Street, Governor Markell, Secretary Murphy, and Rich Heffron of the Delaware Chamber of Commerce,  are all working against teachers teaching.  Which means, they are working against the only one thing that can make things better,

Not a very smart strategy.

What is a great strategy, is to put enough teachers giving us an 11 to 1 student teacher ratio.  Then watch the results come in….

 

How Our Government Is Failing Our Students

If any of these are new to you, click and read the links.  Your eyeballs will fall out of their sockets.

Education policies based on standardization and uniformity tend to fail.

Policies based on distrust of teachers tend to fail. 

Judging teachers’ performance by students’ test scores is both substantively and procedurally flawed.

Fails to take into account Campbell’s Law, one of the best-known maxims in the literature on organizational behavior: if you impose external quantitative measurements to judge work performance that cannot be easily and clearly measured, all you will achieve is a displacement of goals 

More people are realizing that many of the organizations involved in “corporate reform” seem to need reforming themselves.

Those in charge of reforms are more interested in reforming their own bank accounts than our student’s education.

People wonder why reformers themselves aren’t held accountable.

Every pilot project has the chance to succeed or fail.  All of us in charge of anything in our lives know that one has to take some risk and explore new venues.  However, it is the dictator who upon finding that the process he planned does not work for anyone else but himself, … insists on doubling down and making things worse.  The crafty executives pull the plug and walk away with tons of respect for doing what was right.

So the outcome is certain.  Parents, students, teachers, and principals will prevail. The question now is how long will it take, and how many children will be done in by  the collateral damage.

Testing Children Till They Cry!

I don’t think I did.  At least I don’t remember ever crying over the taking of a test… I know towards the end of my academic life, where I stretched myself a little too far, I felt like crying, but  you’d be hard pressed to call me a kid then…  Even if a couple of former lovers would disagree.

But stories abound about these tests being dispensed.   All in the name of Common Core.  Here is the logic.

Our kids are not doing as well as kids in Shanghai.  We need to turn them into Chinese.  The Chinese are brutal.  We need to be brutal to compete.  We will make our test so hard and pump so much knowledge into our child’s heads, that we will do as good or better….

They have come and shanghai’d our kids…..

Someone in the Department of Education must hate kids.   That is the only conclusion a sane person can draw…   Making kids cry over a test?  For what?  Does that make them better citizens?  Does that make them better customers?

It has become obvious at least to this human being, that our Department of Education is interested only in the Department of Education.  It has lost focused.

We are supposed to be educating our children so they can compete in a future world.  Making them cry is the exact opposite approach that is needing to be taken….

Instead, our resources need to go to an 11 to 1 student teacher ratio.   Teachers need to be rated if anything on whether their students are or are not engaged….  It is hard not to be engaged as a student when you have a student teacher ratio 11 to 1 ratio….

And the reason they fight this concept of having more teachers teach students? It is because there is no corporate money in hiring teachers…  Wall Street does not get rich like they do whenever a school district buys a test….

And if you can make a child cry when taking a test, there is a good chance they will all take another one to redeem their self-esteem…..

NRA Gets Its Wish: Guns In Schools

Although it was not as they envisioned.  The gun was brought inside a backpack of a middle school aged child.  Relax, no one died.  He was a good kid and never had any intention of using it.   Just thought it was super cool and wanted to show it off  along with the ammo to his friends… (He didn’t even know it was a real gun.)

The 13 year old as of Friday was being held in the New Castle County Juvenile Detention Center on $39,000 secured bail. And the courts will determine the severity of his penalty.

Of course parents are concerned.  In typical parental fashion they said…. “we need metal detectors at every school.  .

So, let us work through that premise.   Start with how can that be done?   Electronic metal detectors are expensive, and we have a lot of schools.   Currently the Department of Educations website is listing 213 schools... Now for economic reasons, we would at first need only one security site or pass-through site per building, through which everyone enters, and everyone leaves… Once the initial investment is paid for, then incremental units at other entrances and exits can be later added.

So the number is 213 security machines… Here at  Detectronix we have an assortment of walk through metal detectors.  Since most of our state’s students are familiar with jails from visiting family members, perhaps the one that is most secure for our schools would the same brand use for jails, sensitive enough to detect a loaded revolve inserted up the anus or vagina.  That costs  $4199.  However, recognizing a future need after the December 14th Newtown shootings, Detectronix has made a commitment to mass produce a cheaper version which will pick up a hand gun and pinpoint it to a general area of the body.  That reduced rate is $2499.  This cheaper version is more than adequate to isolate incoming weapons, in all but the most sophisticated ploys.   Considering the savings, it is the one I would recommend, the  Detectronix 6-Zone Walk Through Metal Detector  …

Total state cost for walk-through metal detectors? Pretty cheap, just a half a million or exactly $532,500… ($894387 would be the more expensive choice)  This does not include the fee charged for the entity that places the phone call, at 10% that would be another $53,250 dollars….

A electroinic security system needs to be manned to be effective. Otherwise it could beep on every student passing through with no accountability.  One must assume the station should be manned all day.  Even though nothing much happens at any schools entrance after the opening bell, still, if one were intent on bringing a gun to school for say, the purpose of revenge. he would obviously time his arrival at some point after he knew the metal detector was shut down.  So personnel must be stationed until close.

The average school day is 7 hours…  Multiplied by 5 days per week and it is a thirty five hour job,  add half an hour  every day to set up and tear down, and it becomes a full time position.  At salary it averages $39,000 per year. Add the FICA and supplementary benefits costs, the total package runs to: $40,677 per school….  If contracted out to a guard service, the average rate if including fees and contract costs, averages close to $50 per hour used. The contracts per year would range around $78,000 per school… but at the benefit that all liability falls upon the service and not the educational department of the state of Delaware.

So for manning these position, Delaware has two options, government versus private, and as it always works out in everything in life,  government is the cheaper.  $8,664,201  versus $16,614,000

So for a minimum of $8,664,201 a year in personnel costs plus the $532,500 in buying and installing the metal detectors, the first year estimate for that should be close to $9.200,000 dollars with $8,664,201 being spent every year thereafter.

If this is levied to property owners, the average property owner will be charged, of course assuming that Senior Citizens don’t get out of the fee for policies they support,  the fee is $0.0001 per square foot or one/hundredith of a penny per square foot. {$8,664,201/(2490 X 27,878,400)}  If one exempts state land, or makes other exemptions, that cost will rise per private property owner as is to be expected. …

Or if one wishes to allocate that cost per resident, then the assessment rounds up to {$8,664,201 / 917,000} = $9.44 per inhabitant.   That is the price of security. A family of 4 should be willing to ante up $37.79 dollars for keeping children safe…

But, the argument gets quickly raised, as it does with money, … shouldn’t those responsible for creating the problem be the ones to pay for its solution?  Those would be owner of guns. We can’t publish the amounts for confidentiality reasons.  But the gross sales of Miller’s Gunshop alone as reported this quarter  to the Delaware Dept of Revenue, argues that a fair assessment on all gun and ammunition sales at at sales tax rate of 10% would be more than adequate to cover implementing the security of all of Delaware’s schools.

The $8 million a year should not out of a child’s education.  It should come from those those actions are the direct creation of the problem in the first place.

So lets securitize our schools, and make the NRA and all gun owners pay for it… Fair is simply fair.  If we had a registry of all weapons in this country, we wouldn’t be having this problem.  As history will one day determine, the fault lies with no one but the NRA that this common sense legislation was never implemented …..