The local school district (D300) recently got through a labor dispute.  The striking teachers demanded smaller classroom sizes (and some more money).  This classroom size complaint seems odd, given that there was a tax referendum passed just six years earlier to address the exact same problem.

When that referendum was passed, we (taxpayers) were assured that this issue would not pop up again any time in the near future.. Well, here we are just six years down the line and we have to pony up again.

Why?

We can only surmise, since you will not get anyone in an official capacity to speak the words that I’m going to use here, but my guess is that illegal immigration has a lot to do with it.

We have planners who figure out the necessary capacity for the schools, adjusting for future growth, population changes, etc.…they add on that new subdivision on ‘X’ road, etc.  Those planners can only use the data that they have available.  They do not take into consideration the children of illegal immigrants who sneak into our country and stress our public resources. 

This is why we have classroom sizes of 35+ kids.

Now, is anybody going to deny a child an education?  No.  Is anybody going to punish a child because their parents are law breakers?  No…but this does compromise the quality of education of the children of taxpaying citizens of the district.

Not only are our kids sitting in larger classrooms and not getting as much ‘one on one’ attention when they need it, but because there are now students in the classroom that don’t have a command of the native language (English), the teachers are forced to ‘teach down’ to the kids in the class who are struggling with understanding the language.

This is what one might refer to as a “double whammy”. 

American kids need every educational advantage that they can get in this new ‘global’ economy.   They need to stay ahead of the Japanese, the Chinese, etc.  This is a bad time for our kids to have to deal with a compromised education, but thanks to our pandering politicians, that’s what they are getting.