[speaker001:] I'll let you go first
[speaker002:] well I think I don't know how your schools work back there but we support our schools here with property taxes
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] and the land owners or home owners are the ones that pay the school tax so if you're renting a house or doing anything else you're not actually contributing to the education of your children and I think that's wrong I think everybody should contribute to the education of their children even if they had to raise the sales tax by one percent then everybody going through the state would be supporting our education system so as it turns out we don't really have a tremendous education system because they don't have the money they need to run it
[speaker001:] yeah I uh I spent a couple uh years down in uh Plano Texas
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and uh I was one of the home owners down there that got taxed to death for the uh Plano uh school system
[speaker002:] yeah yeah
[speaker001:] and uh I've you know I know that Texas doesn't have a state tax and so all the things come out of the the property taxes
[speaker002:] no
[speaker001:] and I was uh really shocked at the amount of taxes I ended up paying I was I was better off paying a state tax back in Maryland where than I was uh paying the uh property tax down there
[speaker002:] yeah yeah you would be
[speaker001:] uh what they did in Maryland to get around that is they uh they developed a renters tax solely for the purpose of paying for the services that the renters were getting including the uh educational services
[speaker002:] oh yeah
[speaker001:] and uh the tax was administered by um the uh rental company that actually was managing the apartments so when uh long long time ago when I used to live in apartments I would pay a rent
[speaker002:] uh
[speaker001:] payment every month and a tax payment every month
[speaker002:] gee
[speaker001:] and the tax payment went to pay for the services that I was getting as a a resident of that particular county
[speaker002:] yeah um
[speaker001:] and uh that's the way it worked here in Maryland we have uh a certain portion of your your property taxes uh goes to education but also a portion of the state tax that you pay
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] goes back into the county that you live in
[speaker002:] ah
[speaker001:] to pay for the educational system
[speaker002:] oh well that's pretty good
[speaker001:] and so it it works out nice it it it makes it so that the uh whole county now I I know the concept of counties in Texas is quite a bit different than it is here in Maryland uh like Collin County uh would only equal about maybe an eighth the size of Baltimore County here in Maryland
[speaker002:] oh yeah
[speaker001:] I mean the the counties are much larger you know in the the whole state of Maryland I believe there's only like uh fifteen counties
[speaker002:] gee whiz
[speaker001:] and so uh you know each county has their own school system an and it works out real nice um the the the flip side to this is are we getting what we're paying for and I don't believe so um a lot of things have come to head um recently and I heard a report because of uh
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] uh the emphasis that the President was putting on education
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] you know um him running as our education president and then finally a couple of years later getting around to doing something um
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] they said since they imposed the federal regulations on education in other words they came up with this federalized system where everyone in the third grade would be taught basically the same thing
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and then at the end of uh school year they would be tested and then they go into the fourth grade and everybody in the fourth grade's basically taught the same thing so when they came up with these this nationwide system of public schools
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] uh they gave some figures out and since it's inception uh they've the price has gone up per student the prices paid by the federal government per student has been thirty three percent
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and so they're actually spending thirty three percent and that's real dollars you know that adjusting it back to to the days you know when it started uh probably you know seventy years ago
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and what they've said is that we haven't had a thirty three percent improvement in education
[speaker002:] no huh-uh
[speaker001:] we've actually gone backwards
[speaker002:] well they say that Texas schools are some of the lowest in the nation that our high school graduates can't even match the national average
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] so you know our school system down here is no where near perfect but they keep complaining they don't have the money to do it
[speaker001:] yeah well they they've been having some problems uh even here in uh like Baltimore City which is a a pretty good city good good sized city
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] uh they've been putting a lot of uh stress on it and of course speaking of stress the teachers are all getting stressed out from trying to you know do everything they're supposed to do and of course they've uh been cutting the teachers salaries because they say we don't have the money to do it and
[speaker002:] oh yeah yep
[speaker001:] all the services are costing more money and and everything uh but the uh a lot of emphasis now is being put on you know when children used to be taught you know like uh uh each child is individual you know they're not all the same
[speaker002:] yeah yeah they need to take things at their own speed
[speaker001:] and some students do horrible until like eighth grade some do horrible you know until they get to like tenth grade and then all of a sudden everything clicks in you know and then there are some students that you know read well at five years old
[speaker002:] yeah um-hum
[speaker001:] and you know seem to excel and so that the you know one of the things I heard proposed on uh one of the public radio stations up here was that we should go back to teaching children at their own speed some kids
[speaker002:] yeah I think it'd be a lot better
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] you know each child has to learn at his own rate they can't keep force feeding things to each other and or you know at the kids
[speaker001:] and and uh and on top of that they they make the child feel inferior
[speaker002:] um-hum because he can't do it
[speaker001:] because he's not as good as another kid his same age I mean it's like
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] you know that's ridiculous
[speaker002:] and it's not that he can't do it he just can't do it quite as fast or
[speaker001:] yeah and uh you know I have uh I I have five children total and I've got two out of the house already and I have I have two that are in uh eighth grade this year
[speaker002:] yeah all right
[speaker001:] and prior to their um when I when they were in elementary school they were identified identified as being slow
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and so they put them into special programs and then we actually held them back in fourth grade and it wasn't until the last two years um last year my uh they're they're a set of twins um a boy and a girl last year the the uh boy twin started doing real well
[speaker002:] um-hum all right
[speaker001:] and it it it everything started to click in for him and he knew what he n eeded to do um and this year it it happened for uh for the daughter
[speaker002:] huh all right
[speaker001:] she just has been
[speaker002:] jumped on out there
[speaker001:] really doing grea t this year and she has the right attitude towards school and everything and I think it's just a matter of everybody has to find their own path I remember when I was in school I did horrible
[speaker002:] that's good yeah I did too up until ninth or tenth grade
[speaker001:] up until about yeah about the seventh eighth grade I I I started to to come around and realize an and basically I got interested in math and uh never really did well in English but you know once you got interested in something
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and things started to click in place then after that you take off
[speaker002:] yeah and see when I was a kid growing up and going to high school if I wanted to take a little electronics course I had a electronics course I could take but we lived out in the country and we didn't have all that
[speaker001:] um-hum
[speaker002:] fancy stuff to worry about you know we had our auto shop out there and our agricultural shop and
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] you know we had just about every thing that we needed but they don't have it anymore there's a lot of things that they don't do in school anymore our our oldest boy goes to Lubbock High down here and they go to school four and half days a week so
[speaker001:] jeez
[speaker002:] that's pretty weird
[speaker001:] yeah it is um my children had a uh real culture shock um when we lived in Plano I guess I don't know if you've heard about the Plano school district but they're uh they really stress academics there
[speaker002:] no hum
[speaker001:] and uh God if your child is not an honor student well then you're something wrong with you as a parent and that that's kind of the way they are there
[speaker002:] gee yeah
[speaker001:] and uh when we moved back to Maryland um I moved to a uh a Baltimore County which is a northern county in Maryland
[speaker002:] um-hum
[speaker001:] and it's basically a rural county once you get above about the half way point
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and we lived you know in the northern part of the county uh we went from a uh middle school in Texas that served fifty five square blocks to a uh middle school in Maryland that served fifty five square miles
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] and it was just a complete culture shock because I mean they they're riding on the bus in the morning with uh other kids that you know are a sleep because they got up at three o'clock and were doing chores and you know it's
[speaker002:] yeah I can imagine yeah yeah that would be quite a shock
[speaker001:] and they had uh agricultural they had an agricultural course uh I forget what it was called uh but it goes along the the lines of industrial arts but it's agricultural and where they had to raise a small animal
[speaker002:] um-hum oh like Four H then
[speaker001:] had to learn how to drive a tractor they actually had to go take a driving test on the tractor I mean they just couldn't believe this and it was great they loved it
[speaker002:] all right all right
[speaker001:] I mean they really enjoyed the courses um and it you know it made school fun for them again because prior to that school was just a big pain a drain
[speaker002:] yeah just something you do everyday
[speaker001:] yeah and it was you know it was like kind of like the way we feel about going to work
[speaker002:] yeah yeah just something I have to do everyday
[speaker001:] but uh up here they seem to have made it uh a lot of fun for them and they they seem to really enjoy it
[speaker002:] that's good our oldest boy went into school politics and made vice