There's a lot of vested interests, for sure. But the issue is that there's a ton fewer students. The schools, and staff to fill them, should downsize to meet the population. I understand that that's not something the teachers' unions want, but it's the reality. This is especially true in the larger cities. Few people with kids actually live inside the cities; why are they still staffed as if it was 2007? I can recall the high school nearest where I lived as a small kid. There were so many students in the early-80s they actually were running two shifts per day, each with a different set of teachers and staff. The K-12 student population peaked again in the mid-aughts, and has been declining ever since. There weren't many of us Gen Xers, and we had few kids. I can count on one hand the number of folks I knew who had more than two kids....and that's smaller than the number that had zero (myself, included).
Oh yes. People are going to have to give up their obsession with neighborhood schools, with their kids going to school the exact same way kids used to, when demographics, costs, and many other things were different
You weren’t lying Walt, this was a really good newsletter!
AI could replace a lot of those jobs in education….especially with student populations considering to drop….
The schools aren’t going to get that stuff for free though.
There's a lot of vested interests, for sure. But the issue is that there's a ton fewer students. The schools, and staff to fill them, should downsize to meet the population. I understand that that's not something the teachers' unions want, but it's the reality. This is especially true in the larger cities. Few people with kids actually live inside the cities; why are they still staffed as if it was 2007? I can recall the high school nearest where I lived as a small kid. There were so many students in the early-80s they actually were running two shifts per day, each with a different set of teachers and staff. The K-12 student population peaked again in the mid-aughts, and has been declining ever since. There weren't many of us Gen Xers, and we had few kids. I can count on one hand the number of folks I knew who had more than two kids....and that's smaller than the number that had zero (myself, included).
Oh yes. People are going to have to give up their obsession with neighborhood schools, with their kids going to school the exact same way kids used to, when demographics, costs, and many other things were different