Vouchers Just Harm Public Schools

I can think of better ways to improve the schools than vouchers.

Our children need more than a plan that jeopardizes public schools. I am a public high school science teacher, and I work in a school that has not been refurbished or modernized since it was built in the early 1950s. Some of the floor tiles are broken or missing, tables are falling apart and the electrical system cannot handle all the needs of a typical science classroom.

The equipment we use in the classroom is as old as some of the buildings, and there isn’t enough to go around. Sharing the same equipment risks it being damaged.

As I walk around the school I see it showing its age. There is peeling paint and a lack of grassy fields. In this year of extra money for education, our school has a limit on the amount of photocopying we can do because of budget constraints.

Add to this the dilemma of how to spend the money the state provides to the classroom teacher. The new monies available could be used to purchase new science equipment or to purchase additional textbooks for each student. This decision becomes more complicated when you realize that the current textbooks will be phased out of use at the end of this year and that science equipment quickly becomes obsolete.

The state needs to make repairing schools the highest priority. Vouchers are an attempt to make quick and easy changes that would not fix the problems. In fact, they would make them worse. Vouchers would take tax money away from public schools either directly or indirectly, and public schools would have to delay projects because of lack of funds.

Money needed to modernize the aging classrooms, purchase enough textbooks to last seven years or allow teachers to use up-to-date equipment would be put on hold. The only goal of vouchers seems to be to dismantle public schools instead of fixing them.

Start by modernizing classrooms. Buy the equipment necessary to be successful in the 21th century. Purchase equipment for students to run experiments, provide enough textbooks for the students, and computers for the schools. Vouchers would prevent any improvement of our schools.