In a move that both astonished and delighted me, the Timberlane Regional School Board voted 4 to 3 in favor of recommending to the New Hampshire School Boards Association that they advocate for the elimination of the federal Department of Education. Sandown’s own Mr. Barczak made a presentation of devastating factual forcefulness, pointing out that federal involvement in education has not resulted in any improvement in academic achievement whatsoever despite the DOE’s budget growing SIX times since 1980. He also noted that TRSD receives about $2 million a year from the federal government, most of that coming from the DOE, but that the approximately 9000 households in our district contribute on average $900 each to the DOE. This translates to about $8 million dollars a year from us to the DOE – or more than $6 million above what we get back. We would do better, he argued, keeping that money ourselves and directing our own education from top to bottom. His persuasive presentation is reproduced below. Read it and see if you are not also convinced.
Kudos once again to Mr. Barczak, who always does his homework and does it well.
The meeting was held on Thursday night, October 17, 2013. The figures cited for contribution per district household were calculated based on 2010 information.
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