Double the Budget

I do a weekly commenmtary on the Harborstone Credit Union website and I'm so passionate about the topic this week I had to share it with you here as well. You could skip reading and just go to Harborstone.com to hear the audio blog if you'd like or you can let me explain it here.

I work for the Seattle Seahawks doing videos for their web site and every day I observe the way NFL teams do business. It's all very impressive and very efficient and in some cases very effective.

There are 53 players on the active roster every week. There are also 20 coaches on the staff not to mention trainers, doctors and equipment people. There's even a guy who's job it is to make sure everything runs on schedule.

What if we used that system with that ratio in our public school system. The average public school in our state has 25 students per teacher. By NFL standards they'd have 10 teachers for every 25 students.

Just think of how smart American students would be with that much help. Their chances of competing for jobs at the global level would be greatly enhanced.

Of course it would mean doubling the school budget and it's tough enough making it work the way it is.

My solution is simple if silly. Let's charge a fee to have fans come and see the teachers teaching the students. We'll sell hot dogs and drinks and print nice programs. We can also sell jerseys with the kids names on the back. Heck we can even sell television rights to ESPN, NBC and FOX and have the classes on "live" television. Then with all that revenue we hire a few thousand more teachers and bring our public schools up to par.

Sound silly? No sillier than putting professional football above public schools on our list of priorities.