Steve Benson for April 23, 2018

And it isn’t just the players. Penn State is paying the football coach around $3 million. Since they are part of the state system of higher education and partially funded by the taxpayers of Pa., we are getting stuck for a part of that bill. There’s money that could be put to better uses.

Every land disposal bill from the feds has dedicaded the money to education, public education is our best investment, as are teachers. How about all those cities or public entities paying to build sports stadiums for millionaires, paying athletes outrageous salaries as well. Invest in the future scientists, or future beer drinking couch potatoes watching sports on TV.

Maryland’s lottery is supposed to go toward education. So far, we haven’t noticed much improvement.

The one making sense should get the $. Not the other way around.

We Americans have a tendency to throw huge amounts of money at intertainers (jocks included) while we throw our children to teachers and demand they make something of the children. The result: we have very rich jocks and greatly underpaid teachers. Fantastic priorities – yay for us.

If we paid them what they were really worth to society, teachers would be driving Rolls and Bentleys and the athletes would have used Yugos.

Sadly this is FAR too true!! But, Steve, you forgot the MOST egregious waste of money that should be going to Teachers and other education professionals, Legislative Salaries!

Clearly education drives success in life. Good education costs money. I simply cannot understand why any community would chose to not fund education. In the short term they save some money, but long term they are creating a population that will require more social services and not be able to participate in the work world of increasing technology. They are solving a short term tax problem at the cost of a huge long term social problem. Republicans seem to aspire to a world where everybody is on their own. They don’t want any government or taxes. If you are poor and can’t afford the necessities of life such as medical care, you can suffer or die. If they have their way, soon we will be like some third world countries where the poor die in the streets and perhaps days later someone comes along to remove the body.

With Betsy there is little hope. However, how about we use the $ intended for the parade and the wall for EDUCATION and our service men and women and vets.

Now, the average college graduate pays about $5800 more a year in federal taxes than the average high school graduate. Over 30 years, that totals about $172,000. If that’s divided by the 4 years it takes to get a college education, the government would break even if it paid every student $42,000 a year to attend school.

This doesn’t even consider that with the degree, the person is less likely to ever need unemployment or welfare, that more students would complete high school if they could see a clear way to a really good job, and that they would be enriching the Social Security and Medicare funds. They would also be paying a larger amount in all other types of taxes.The best investment we could make to keep America strong is to not just forgive all student loans but to make all higher education, as long as the student is making decent grades, totally free, and increase the number of schools and teachers to make room for all who can profit from the education. We don’t, even at this time of high unemployment, have so much a lack of jobs as we have a lack of people who have the skills to perform the jobs that are available- in other words, a lack of education.

What really kills me are the folks who walk into a high-end steak place and know they will have to pay a high price to get a great steak. Yet they seem to think they can get the kids a great education while paying the lowest possible taxes. You only get what you pay for. Poor funding for education yields poorly educated citizens.

Just a note, in all but a few states, the highest paid public employees are football or basketball COACHES, not teachers or professors.

Too many people (especially politicians) don’t trust people who know and/or understand more than they do. If you can’t pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, push the others down lower. As long as you’re “higher” (i.e.- better), nothing else matters.

Besides, science is heretically opposed to MY BIBLE.

While watching a public meeting in Milwaukee about the taxpayers having to foot the bill for a new stadium for the Milwaukee Bucks, I saw a woman SCREAMING at the panel of lawmakers asking how could you risk letting the Bucks move elsewhere. I wonder if she puts that much effort into her children’ education, or is that concerned about other children getting robbed of a decent education.

Others have already mentioned coaches at colleges, there is also an issue with administrators at ALL school levels. They make a lot more than teachers (who do you think approves the HUGE salaries for college coaches?) and often hire family members for their “staff”.

Sorry. In the final analysis, teachers aren’t entertainers. We only pay entertainers big bucks. We give lip service to education, but we’d rather see Beyonce dance and sing or watch a Seahawk bash a 49er (or vice versa). Education? What’s that worth? Save the planet? Save civilization? Meh!

… sigh, This again. Those athletes that get paid huge amounts of money deserve what they get. Yes Teachers need to be paid more… But comparing them to Athletes like its an either or is some BS. They are getting paid alot because they are the best in the world at what they do. And its not taxpayer money that pays them… its the owners… who by the way make way more off of them than they pay them… yet they are never pictured in these comparisons. Stupid and flawed comparison.

I was a teacher once in my checkered past. Admittedly, it was before “No Child Left Behind” which just means “No Child Gets Ahead.” Even then, the pay was not too good and the hours too long (since you worked grading papers, making lesson plans, and other administrative chores long after the dismissal bell). I left that honorable profession not long after a gentleman inquired of me just what it would take to pass his daughter. The young lady had defined a prepositional phrase as the words used by a guy asking a girl to marry him.

Well, we are an Entertainocracy after all. How else could we have a reality TV star as president?

Three of the above entertain millions. One strives to serve less than 120 per year.

If a teacher could effectively teach millions at a time, that teacher could be paid tens of millions of dollars.

And consider the fact that Florida spends $7,221 per student per year and you can see plenty is spent, it just doesn’t all reach the teacher. Some goes to security from outsiders and fellow students, building expenses construction and maintenance and energy and water and sewage and…, transportation expenses, behavior modification, testing, meals, medical care, and LOTS of supervisors.

Televise anything and there will be money to be made. Remember world series of poker? How about televising educators?

They do; it’s called TED talks. No one watches…