Shutting Down Schools: What Gives?

Yesterday, I listened a little bit to The Michael Kay Show where the title host and Don La Greca talked a little bit about a Catholic school shutting down because of inefficient funds to keep it running. The school, St. Anthony in New Jersey, was home to many basketball championships over the years, including some recent ones. It got me back to thinking about the issues about my elementary school shutting down. The place I went to from 1997-03 was ending after 70 plus years. Where does the problem lie as far as closing?

Really, it's more than just one factor, and it amplifies as the years go on. I think one is where you live. Certain parts of the United States are friendly to families. If they can't find a job and/or can't deal with taxes that are high due to possibly tuition or school costs, they might scurry out. That was a thing that La Greca and Kay talked about. The costs were too much for ones that wanted to go to St. Anthony. By the time I graduated in my school district, there was between 70 and 80 students of my year. I think the number has dwindled down a little bit. I've had cousins who graduated with 40 students. People don't want to deal with all sorts of bullshit that occurs.

I hate to be a downer, but where I live, it's slowly becoming a ghost town. There are still a lot of people, but not enough children. Another problem is renovation.  My district has three schools. Two are elementary, which both are planning to close, and a high school. I don't remember there being any issues with the elementary schools. I know in high school whenever there was pretty bad rain storms, there would be leaks to certain parts of it to where  buckets were used to catch the leaks. All three were looking at very high costs. Unfortunately, they took the easy way out instead of fixing things.

For my town, we really don't have much beyond the elementary school. We have a couple gas stations, a post office, convenience store, a small park with baseball fields, a basketball court, and a pool for the summer. There's a couple churches, a small ice cream eatery on the outskirts of town, some car repair areas. The list goes on. It does help we get truckers who are looking to rest a little bit after a long day or night driving on the road. At the end of the day, I really don't know if the town could potentially go bankrupt.

It sucks to see a school go away. Any school, really. The wheels go into motion and it hurts the people who live in an area that closes a school. It's a shame.

Check out this school related blog:
http://sullivanentertainment.blogspot.com/2017/03/snow-stories-and-buffoonish-schools.html