Ask any almost any American and the answer that you will receive will be no. The idea that the government would forcibly keep the poor at the lowest level of society goes against the American spirit, yet this is what is happening.

The schools that are the worst schools are the intercity schools where a large majority of poor Americans live. Rich families can avoid sending their kids to these schools; they can afford to have them schooled at a private school, however poor families do not have this option. They are forced to live with whatever the government provides, which, often isn’t adequate.

This problem can be solved, however the solution seems to be too controversial to gain bipartisan support. Ironically, the solution is easy enough to figure out. Let the students and their families choose which school they want to attend and have the government pay the tuition costs (with the money that would have been given to the original assigned school).

This solutions has several advantages. Firstly, poor students are restrained because they can’t afford to attend a better school. The simply aren’t restrained by their parents income level and are given a chance at making it in the real world. Secondly, letting students choose encourages competition among schools. The bad schools will be forced to either get their act together and make their school a good place to learn, or lose the business of students and be shut down. Thirdly, it gives lower middle class students and their families relief (from having to pay tutution and have to have tax money be sent to the local public school).

Also, this plan would encourage higher teacher pay across the board because public school teachers would be in direct competition with their private school counterparts.

This plan also has a disadvantage. Some private schools only allow a certain number of students in or only allow an elite number of students in. This could be perhaps countered by a law saying that private schools must allow a certain number of students in. Of course, I hate to impose regulations on businesses, so private schools would be allow to make the student sign a contract saying that they will meet the school’s regulations or be subject to being dropped.

Overall, student vouchers would be a great way to reform our system. And to counter any skepticism, this plan has already been proven to work. The voucher program has already been implemented in several countries in Europe, and as it turns out, all of those countries place above the US in education rankings.

Posted under Other, Politics, School by Will Gries on Tuesday, May 8th 2007; 6:34 pm

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The outcome of the SILO tax will be determined in around an hour (as well as the Auditor position). Keep your eyes on the news and hope for a SILO victory!

With any luck it will get passed and the property tax will return to normal levels. The snow potentially hurt the vote today as many people just stayed home - but hopefully the people who managed to leave house, voted for lower property taxes.

Check the right side of the blog for updates as we recieve them!

Posted under Local, Politics, School by Will Gries on Tuesday, February 13th 2007; 7:20 pm

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Hmm, its an interesting question. Can local schools survive and continue to expand (some might say exponinetally) without raising taxes? I believe yes.

I have this crazy idea. Anyone ever save up for something? You find its awful hard to save if you are spending all, or almost all of the money you are making, its awful hard to buy what you want to buy. So my plan for the schools to buy things that they need rather things that they want. Like I said, its absolutely crazy but it has a high success rate when applied so I think it might work.

Encourage those you know to Vote NO in the Local Option SILO Sales Tax.

Posted under Politics, School by Will Gries on Thursday, February 1st 2007; 8:13 pm

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I’ve got no problem with Mexican immigrants – in fact I would encourage immigration reform so that people don’t have to immigrate illegally and can immigrate legally so we can have track of exactly who is in our country.

I would find the statement ‘America for Americans’ particularly hateful but the English language is our language. It is perfectly acceptable if you would like to speak your own language at home, at your church, whatever that is fine. But don’t come into the country that I was born into and demand that I learn Spanish so that I can be more compatible with your needs.

And its happening all over – I’ve seen television ads (that’s right in Marion, IA) in Spanish and I’ve seen cereal boxes in Spanish and in Spanish and English. In addition, I’ve seen on multiple occasions people speaking Spanish at school! To my knowledge, this hasn’t happened in this part of the country too much yet but in the border states kids get sent to school that have no knowledge of English. None – these kids cannot function with the rest of the country.

This is part of the reason I refused to take Spanish (taking French instead), and when I do take Spanish (in college) if I ever hear it spoken to me will pretend that I don’t speak the language. I will speak Spanish when I go to Mexico or when I go to Spain.

Particularly what I find makes me angry about the growing Spanish speaking population is when companies try to take advantage and make billboards and signs in Spanish to attract Spanish speaking customers. Like the Mc Donald’s ad (In Spanish, “Come and eat at Mc Donald’s so you can be as fat as Americans”).

American’s proudly say “No hablo español, I speak English”. English is our heritage and other groups of immigrants learn it and use it here.

This note officially bears the Cory Hubler “signature of excellence”

Posted under Other, Politics, School by Will Gries on Monday, January 1st 2007; 6:24 pm

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My awareness for how much political correctness affects our personal lives hit me last year. We had to go to some stupid harassment seminar or something stupid like that. The “Keynote” speaker was some ex-Linn Mar staff member that began her speech talking about the correct terms for people and what not. Here is the killer, she says “Don’t ever call me a chairman because I am not a man. Instead call me a chairwomen.” Ok, this is ridiculous.

Definition: Chairwomen –
NO DEFINITIONS FOUND (Google of course).

I think the more appropriate term to describe what you are is chairman or even chairperson:

Definition Chairman:
the officer who presides at the meetings of an organization

Definition Chairperson:
Member of the majority party who presides over the work of a committee or subcommittee.

See being called a chairman doesn’t actually mean that you are a man. It has no definition of that sort. A chairman is what you are called when that is the position that you hold. You can’t just make up words to suit yourself, dumbass.

Furthermore this whole political correctness thing is just stupid. Its gotten to the point where some people get extremely offended when the greeting ‘Merry Christmas’ is expressed. Christmas trees and wreaths are now holiday trees (and holiday wreaths). Manger scenes are left without Mary, Joseph and Jesus figures. Even stupider is schools that replace traditional Christmas songs with Holiday songs (‘I’m dreaming of a White Holiday’ just sounds stupid!). This has gone a step to far.

But on the other end it is just as bad. Some people get equally offended if the greeting ‘Happy Holidays’ is expressed. I’ve heard people pissed off that ‘Christmas break’ is now ‘Holiday break’ or ‘Winter Break’. So equally to far – as its perfectly acceptable to say Happy Holidays (during the month of December there is at least 5 holidays whether religious or secular).

Ridiculous? I think so

Posted under Politics, Religion, School by Will Gries on Tuesday, December 12th 2006; 5:50 pm

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Ok, I’ve decided to make a most ridiculous item of the day for today and maybe other days as well. I noticed a left leaning group about abortion basically just bashing all non-liberal responses on the message board. Pretty silly, but not the most ridiculous item of the day. The most ridiculous item of the day actually happened two years ago, in 8th grade. The story as follows:

My social studies teacher, Garoutte, the most liberal teacher I can think of, got on the subject of abortion. How - I don’t know. We were supposed to be talking about the American revolution.

Anyhow, she told us that the reason that abortion was actually made legal was to prevent women from turning to the black market to get abortions. Only thing is, the abortions actually caused a lot of harm and the law was passed to ‘protect’ women.

This idea of prevention of black market abortions is just stupid. Think about it more though:

Drunk Driving no doubt kills many drunk drivers every year. Its illegal to drive over a certain blood-alcohol limit but people still do it. So I say, in the spirit of Roe v. Wade we make drunk driving legal, to protect the drunk drivers. We won’t worry about the pedestrians and non-drunk drivers that are harmed.

Silly, I think so.

“And thats the most ridiculous item of the day”.

Posted under Politics, School by Will Gries on Friday, December 1st 2006; 5:30 pm

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