Dad on Duty – My First Thoughts

This is me “fixing” a big moth at the request of the Kindergarten class at Tori’s school today. Played security, EMT, repair man, butterfly vet and teacher at Tori’s school today. As always, it was awesome. I do a day at Tori’s school, doing general Dad stuff, about every 3 weeks.

I’d like to preach a bit about support for public education.

Public education matters tremendously to the success of us all, and it needs your support. For relatively little money, we can make a huge influence in the outcome of these kids, and that influence directly affects the societal costs of health care and public safety.
If we spend a little money now on good staffing in elementary school, we save a LOT of money later on paramedics, cops, hospitals and jails.

This epiphany has been a fascinating journey for me personally. I arrived at this realization after 30 years working as a paramedic and seeing, first hand, the worst that can happen to people. Truly.

I have so many co-workers and acquaintances that dismiss the call for better funding for public education. “Teachers make plenty of money”; “families and the community need to step up and fill the void”; “folks are making bad choices; it’s not our job to pay to fix that” are some of the arguments I hear.

The reality is that Amy and I could send Jack and Tori to private schools and avoid contact with kids that have challenges. And our two kids would probably do fine in the world. But we choose not to. In part, because that wouldn’t solve the real problem…..there will be so many kids who will leave school lacking basic skills to be successful, and therefore cost us all a lot of money.

Here’s my experience: We can’t fix the parents. But we can fix some of the kids. And that opportunity is hugely valuable. We need a little more money in the public schools to make a big impact.

If you have the chance to do so, please make the choice to fund public schools the very best you can. I can’t think of a more cost-effective way to improve all of our lives.

Thanks for reading my rant…