Public Education in The United States

I plan on beginning a series of posts on public education in the United States.

My background:

I attended public schools from first grade through high school—grade school, junior high school, high school—in my home town of Morton, Illinois.

I attended and graduated from a public university in Illinois—Illinois State University—earning a master’s degree in political science in five years.

I taught in two public high schools in Illinois—Cissna Park High school which had a high school population of about two hundred and St. Charles High School which had a high school population of about two thousand four hundred. (During some of my time teaching at St. Charles, it was a three grade high school. It then was changed to the normal four grade high school when a new school was built. The figure I used is based upon it being a four grade school.)

After moving to Arizona, I served a four year term as a school board member at Marana Unified School district located northwest of Tucson. Marana, at the time, was the largest school district in the State of Arizona according to square miles within the district. During the four years I was on the board, we built our second junior high and our second high school. We also built three additional grade schools going from three to six schools. According to its website: “A staff of 1,800 employees serve over 12,500 students within eleven elementary schools, one intermediate school, two middle schools, two high schools, and one alternative school.” Two of the five members of the board I served with are still members of the board. Besides building the five schools: we

1) instituted a completely new disciple policy,

2) established the first elementary Spanish language program in the State, as far as I know,

3) were the first school district in the State to change the girls’ softball program from the winter months to the spring and girls’ basketball program from the spring to the winter much to the chagrin of our conference’s athletic directors who claimed it could not be successful because of the lack of facilities and lack of coaches, referees, and umpires. Once Tucson Unified joined our change, the whole State did.

I estimated that I spent at least forty hours a week on school board business during the four years.

During my time in Arizona, I owed a business as a tax consultant. Some of my clients sent their children to private Christian schools and a few of them home schooled. While there, Arizona instituted a program within its income tax system to give a tax credit to taxpayers who donated money to a recognized organization that provided scholarship money to students who attended private schools. Another program allowed a tax credit for taxpayers who donated money to public schools. Both of these programs are still in operation today and have, in fact, been expanded from the original programs.

Next post: The article that convinced me to write about public education.