[speaker001:] it's it's hard topic topic because is it is it is it doing a good job or a bad job and you got to divide it two different categories whether you live in the city or whether you live in a more rural place like I do
[speaker002:] yeah and are you talking about public schools being lower level high school level or
[speaker001:] well public school all the way up kindergarten all the way up to uh uh high school
[speaker002:] state school okay but you're excluding high-level education
[speaker001:] yes well yeah I am um actually actually I think that I at the higher level education I don't think there's so much of a problem there it's pretty much funded well there are small colleges that I'm sure are struggling
[speaker002:] okay
[speaker001:] but uh it's the job that the the high school and the grade schools are doing that I see in a area like ours our school even a bad school is a good school up here where if I lived in New York City or Washington DC uh I would seriously consider moving if I had a child I wouldn't let them go to a public school system there but of course people are trapped economically and they can't do that
[speaker002:] yeah I know down here the school's are you know I don't know they rate I moved to Arkansas and Texas after living in Ohio and the schools down here rate you know bottom ten percent across the country and having been through grade school up there and coming down here to high school I can understand why because they're so far behind and so poorly staffed half the time the teachers don't know what's going on
[speaker001:] well that's really too bad because it it it's giving some people unfair advantage I mean we our high school up here is like a junior college in Florida what we learned
[speaker002:] right well that was my experience going through junior high up there when I came down south for high school I was just repeating what I'd already done
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] because we were so far advanced and uh the you know I'd been in a parochial school before junior high and you know even the public schools are behind the parochial schools
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] so you know I I like the concept they've got now where they have more directed education you know you you pick a career path or you get counseling earlier and then you you learn the things that help you rather than spending four years learning the same things over and over
[speaker001:] oh they they have that down there that
[speaker002:] well they talk about it and there are a few in some of the more like in I live in a big metroplex and some of the the better parts of the metroplex the the suburbs that are richer have those kind of target schools but uh you know
[speaker001:] yeah it's like if if your father owns a grocery store and you're really interested in that there's no reason that you should take college prep courses when you can get some general business courses in high school
[speaker002:] right or if you're going to go the science route you can go to a target school that specializes in science or art you know there's no point in you know I'm an engineering student and if I have to go take art classes you know I'm not going to use them and through high school I could have gone so much further if I'd gone to a school that was directed
[speaker001:] yeah that's where I was fortunate I'm a I'm a technician and we had a vocational um electronics in our high school
[speaker002:] right in high school
[speaker001:] so when I went to my first year of tech school uh I had a very easy time because our high school had a a good program
[speaker002:] right I think the schools today you know the public schools are just they're just overrun you know they don't know what to do there's too many kids and not enough teachers and too many kids don't care
[speaker001:] yeah I find that that the that in the in the cities it's more less the kids go there
[speaker002:] and
[speaker001:] to socialize not really to learn and the parents send them there because they're supposed to and plus it gets them out of their hair and I also find that
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] that you can send a kid to school but if don't work with them as a parent I think you're putting your child at a big disadvantage
[speaker002:] yeah and you know there's some kids that you know want to go learn but most of them just want to go play
[speaker001:] yeah well I could I could see if a kid doesn't have any encouragement if they're you know come from a broken home and their parents are more concerned about trying to work and or maybe they're unemployed and they're mad at the world I can see where that wouldn't be very good for a a kid you know he's coming up will you help me with my homework and they're no get away from me I've had a terrible day so it's got a lot to do with economics in the area that you come from
[speaker002:] yeah that's true I'm wondering with the boom down here it's well not at the moment but a lot of the industry's moving southward
[speaker001:] yes are they going to move to uh Mexico
[speaker002:] so oh I don't know about that but a lot of the industry up in uh you know the northern states is moving south and I'm wondering if that's going to have any effect you know on what you see now we're we're we're behind down here I say we because I live here if that might not turn around in the next you know fifteen twenty years
[speaker001:] yeah maybe the maybe they'll bring their good schools with them you know if the industry comes
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] hopefully they'll promote good schools because I know the town that I come from the the uh the large IBM plant has something to do with the top rated high school because of their tax base for one and plus for for the type of student that's going to that school it's going to raise the level of the school
[speaker002:] right
[speaker001:] because your parents are engineers or chemists they're they're you're most likely to do better in school they're going to help you
[speaker002:] you hope
[speaker001:] yeah you hope well I think I I don't know I just think it it's it's a duty of the parent to do that I mean jeez my parents always helped me and I don't know it's just like you say it's the way you're raised and the economic situation you're in I can see some lady she's twenty one years old and she's got four kids a kid in her first grader I don't see where she's going to have much time for him so I don't know it's just like
[speaker002:] I guess you just have to wonder is it up to the is it you know who whose supposed to make the change the the state the government the federal government you know where's the money supposed to come from is it
[speaker001:] I don't know actually I think it I think it should be a civic level the city level and a a system level really to find out and to to see what they need and not overinflate it
[speaker002:] you know what what do you advocate more taxes or better management of what they got
[speaker001:] like if the teachers are getting six percent raises every year when people in industry have been getting cut back and you're getting raises every eighteen months you got to go hey now wait a minute we're in a recession here
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] we uh our town didn't pass the school budget this year and for the first time in many many years just because people are are in the recession and they're even though we've uh enjoyed very good employment here for the past ten years now we got eight percent uh unemployment when it used to be four or five people are going whoa
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] so
[speaker002:] starts hitting closer to home
[speaker001:] yeah but I always see it's all it's all money this like a couple other topics we had talked about was crime It it's it's all money based and what you can do unless you just get down to the parent level and and then if you're in a bad situation where you have to send your child to a bad school who knows but maybe we do we need some more Catholic schools support the church instead they seem to have done a the good job in the past in uh some places uh you couldn't go to a public school it was miles down the road and the only school you could go to was the Baptist school or the Catholic school so
[speaker002:] yeah they're a lot more strict
[speaker001:] yeah the I don't
[speaker002:] you uh have to learn you aren't given the chance to you know screw off all the time
[speaker001:] yeah I don't know if I would do that to my child though but so hum pretty much though see I don't have any good ideas or or anything that would contribute see this isn't a subject that I think a lot about because I'm never faced with it because our school system in Vermont it seems to do a really good job
[speaker002:] well I know I'm in the you know the only reason I asked about secondary schools or you know advanced education is because down here you know going to the University of Texas the education I'm getting I think is kind of shoddy for a public school
[speaker001:] is it
[speaker002:] I I don't think I'm getting what I should but you know in Texas it's next to free because they they pay so much of it it's state supported but at the same time it's really not it's not like going to MIT my engineering degree will be nothing like somebody coming out of MIT and that's it's really too bad
[speaker001:] well that
[speaker002:] but that's I don't know I think it just builds on the foundation that they've already built you get people out of high schools and college junior colleges that don't have the background for an MIT kind of curriculum so
[speaker001:] well so you have to go to a lesser engineering school we have a very good public school up here and a degree out there means a lot it's a very good school it's it's University of Vermont um we also have some two year college well there's a four year colleges they all have a pretty good reputation but like you say you