By Samuel Strait, Reporter at Large – February 17, 2021 As I was writing the past couple of articles regarding our woeful public schools, it occurred to me, with some prompting, that most people in this community have no idea exactly how the school district's current budget nearly fifty million dollars is being spent. If statistics are any measure, most of it goes for employee salaries and benefits. As a taxpayer, you know the drill, property tax, sales tax, income tax, and any other way the government can squeeze you for your very last dime. In California, and therefore our local school district, forty percent of that collection, as well as contributions from the federal government goes to support our local education. The theory being that even if you do not have youth to be educated, society in general will benefit from an educated future generation. Progress paid forward. So in detail let's look at what that massive outlay of public funds have brought us when it comes to educating our local youth. From Public Review 2021 Grades KG-12 Students: 3.553 Students Student/Teacher ratio: 23:1 Minority Enrollment: 50% Graduation Rate: 91% although some are reporting 94% (Top 50% in California) Overall Testing Rank: Bottom 50% Math Proficiency: 24% to 27% depending on who you ask (State average 38%) Reading Proficiency: 24% to 35% depending on who you ask (State Average 50%) Diversity Score: 0.67 like it should matter when it comes to education! After that dismal parade of statistics it is important to know, that the Del Norte Unified School District has the HIGHEST concentration of top ranked public schools in California. The County's High School, Redwood Elementary School and Pine Grove Elementary are all considered to be "top Ranked". The problem being that only the High School has a testing rate of over 50%. Four schools are ranked 2/10 and two others at 3/10 in the testing of the student body. Could it get any worse, of course, one school is 1/10. Imagine that. Us News and report has Del Norte High ranked #846 within California (out of 3,162) and #6,367 in the National Rankings. Sounds pretty good, in the upper half in California, until you know that California is near the bottom of rankings for schools nation wide. 37th through 42nd depending on who you believe. Bottom line is the tax paying public is paying billions of dollars for this walking disaster each and every year and apparently has NO say in calling a halt to the madness. It isn't as if we haven't had any warning that it was this bad. In the eighty's the federal government, no telling how it penetrated their tiny brains, recognized the problem and attempted to do some thing about it. Unfortunately, they relied on our "educational princes and princesses" and have seen the decline steepen. Here locally the decline of numbers continues to this day. Thank Heavens testing did not occur in the Spring of the 2019-2020 school year or the decline would have been devastating. There, of course, is the nonstop bleating for more money, and more teachers, but 23:1 at the local level doesn't seem to make much of a difference, as the fifty million dollar budget can't seem to halt the slide. One might even be so bold as to point out that the rise of the California Teacher's Union in the 1960's seems to coincide with the decline of public education, if it ever was a good idea in the first place. With the announcement that students will have returned to school this week, not really, I was kidding, What constitutes the current version of "school" can hardly be called that. As such, Del Norte Public School students will be holding a rally at the fairgrounds on March 15,2021 organized by Lily Wilson because they want to go back to school, real school. Starting on March 15,2020 denotes the date that public schools were closed for the most part due to the Covid Virus. It will have been a year to the day that something like "real" school was halted and replaced by something that clearly doesn't work. School District, a memo, even your students know that you are failing them, wake up.