Could our school system have been designed to operate more inefficiently?
In the May 13 story “Bursting at the seams: Crowded schools vex districts,” Battle Ground Assistant Superintendent MaryBeth Lynn laments, “There’s no way all those kids could fit in this nice, beautiful cafeteria that we have.” Then split the kids into lunch shifts.
The solution is so obvious it is stunning that it needs to be stated. Have half the kids take a 45-minute lunch break in one hour, the other half in the next, and use the half hour in between to tidy up. Voila! Cafeteria space effectively doubled.
Is soaking taxpayers for more and more money easier than using common sense?
Schools close for the summer so kids can work on the family farm, except family farms mostly disappeared many years ago. We have a six-month school year (180 school days). Extend that to nine months, and we find that K-12 (six years of actual school time) becomes K-8 or K-9 (six years or six years and nine months of actual school time.) Kids complete their basic schooling in eight or nine years instead of 12, and effectively increase school “space” by 33 to 50 percent.
Will things change? Probably not. It’s not their own money they are wasting, is it?
