DENNIS BAYLOR FOR STATE SENATE

         Help Stop America's Most Extravagant Legislature !

Education

FOSTERING A LIFETIME OF LEARNING.

Education is an issue that has become more and more worrisome with time; problems with our state’s educational system have brought legislators to the lawmaking table and have kept parents awake at night.  The trouble with educating our children is that these sleepless parents are not able to be involved enough in the process, due to their own financial burdens and an inadequate state appropriation structure of school funding. 

Economic stress forces both parents to work full-time jobs in many families; single parents often have to seek two jobs or work long hours.  This shear lack in availability of parents to children can hinder their ability to learn, both directly and indirectly.  When a parent is home and able to take interest in his/her child’s school lessons, the parent may clarify the material, and explain it from a different perspective other than that provided by a teacher.  Since parents begin teaching their children from birth, it only seems logical that a child who has difficulty understanding a concept could learn it more easily with aid from a patient parent. 

This simple direct act of a parent helping a child with lessons will also help to motivate the child to continue to learn, to want to be educated; parents who convey excitement for their children to learn will in turn create excitement in learning for their children.  Perhaps as a positive byproduct, consistent involvement in children’s lives could also give parents more authority to hold them accountable for their actions, and help teach them responsibility as a virtue.

Indirectly, parental absence in education reduces the number of eyes focused on the school systems.  Citizens have the right and ability to shape school policies, but only those who have the time to dedicate to such endeavors actually do so.  Allowing parents more time at home with their children would generate more enthusiasm for them to participate in their children’s education; this would create a population of parents who are attentive to their school district’s policies and agendas, and are more prone to push for changes where necessary.  Who better to mold the education of children than their parents themselves?

In order to begin alleviating financial stress from working families and enable positive changes to occur in the educational system, the state needs to take more financial responsibility for the school systems’ operation.  Every school district in Pennsylvania should receive EQUAL appropriations from state coffers, each amounting to about half of the school’s functioning costs.  Providing uniform appropriations for every school in the state would put each district on the same financial level, and would offer each child comparable educational opportunities, regardless of geography.  However, shifting a bulk of the financial responsibility of education to the state will only play a part in relieving economic strain on local families.  Many aspects of government and taxation urgently require reform, and by making these and other essential modifications, the state’s educational system will play a major role in solving its own problems.

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