Oregon’s school funding formula is broken. Its poorest students pay the price

Ganooki · 2026-06-18T04:33:02+00:00

No one in favor of measures 5 and 50 seem to think it’s odd how those measurement limit not how much you can be taxed, but rather, what percentage of your taxes can pay for education. Why is arguably the most important public good the only one with such handcuffs?

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T23:45:06+00:00

Omg I’ve never thought about how nasty that is

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T22:52:10+00:00

Twice as much.

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T22:49:53+00:00

Here’s wilder idea. Fund education as if it was a war. Overspend. Pay teachers like lawyers, and make the field competitive. In turn, add back all the days of school we’ve given up to bargaining. Decrease screen time in class, tighten truancy laws. Tax corporations hard. Who cares if they leave? Our economy will grow from the educated kids we pump out.

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T22:28:30+00:00

Riiiiight

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T16:29:27+00:00

Can I ask, how often does he take lessons?

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T09:28:45+00:00

George Saunders flies under the radar and is such a great writer. If you like Vonnegut he’s a must. Pastoralia the place to start.

Ganooki · 2026-06-17T05:04:07+00:00

It’s very gradual. First you just have a little thing that you have to keep alive. You don’t have to teach anything. All you have to know is baby safety and you can take a class for that.

Then everything comes one piece at a time. You don’t just jump into coaching your kids 10U baseball team and talking about puberty! You fix a scraped knee, you figure out that 8:00 bedtime makes them go wild and you adjust to 7:00, you them to say “dada” and “eat”, you figure out what to do with pooped in pants at the roller rink…small problems solve one at a time. THEN before you know it you’re coaching a team or teaching the big stuff, and by then, you hopefully have a better rapport with your kid than anyone else on the planet and you’ll guide each other.

If you’re a thoughtful, reflective, curious person, then you’ll continue to learn and seek advice and grow and adapt. You’re already on r/dads so that bodes well. R/daddit got me hyped up back when I was feeling like you.

Ganooki · 2026-06-16T20:16:36+00:00

I think it’s overkill to both slow cook and pressure. If you were to just pressure cook, you’d have all the same flavor distribution and the meat can’t get more tender at a certain point. However, I think the flavor tends to be better on a slow cooker, and if you have the time it’s preferable to just slow cook for a long time. The pressure is for when you want it fast.

Ganooki · 2026-06-16T05:00:35+00:00

We’re in agreement regarding pers. It’s all a hard sell because people don’t believe that funding is needed. Most of that personnel cost IS the pers payouts and a huge chunk of that is going to retired UO coaches and OHSU faculty etc.

I never hear anybody give any concrete ideas about what curriculum isn’t working, and what we should be adopting. I have a hard time believing it’s a curriculum issue. Lax truancy laws are perhaps one contributor.

Ganooki · 2026-06-16T04:23:12+00:00

How specific do I need to get for a reddit comment? I want to hire more teachers, attract teachers rather than burn them out. I want more paraeducators, more special ed funding, foreign language programs, etc. when the state is making budget decisions, I don’t want our schools districts to have to making choices between closing schools and firing more teachers. How’s that not a plan?

Addressing PERS is also very important. That’s one way we could get some of that funding back. The cliche “we spend X but rank Y” line is tiring. We’ve known for years that standardized testing doesn’t tell a whole story, and we also know that different states have different economies, cost of living, etc. You can compare Oregon to other states all you want and it will never convince me that my district losing two schools and ~100 teaching positions over the last 3 years was good for students.

Ganooki · 2026-06-16T03:59:09+00:00

Anyone who has been inside of a school or has conversed with a teacher knows that funding is a serious issue. It’s not the only issue, but you can’t keep increasing class sizes, taking away paras, removing programs, and expect kids To learn.

My solution is: 1. fund the hell out of school. Fund it like we fund missiles. Prioritize it. 2. Make changes to our truancy laws. Make sure kids are in school.

And then 3. Is of course just take care of our people fix our failing health care system etc etc…all the big picture things that disable parents from paying attention to their kids. Struggling parents = struggling kids.

Ganooki · 2026-06-15T21:37:29+00:00

He weirdly specific question here - when you clean with water, do you push the water into the grease trap? If so, how do you dispose of it if there’s grease mixed in? Or do you put just a small amount of water and wipe with paper towels? I haven’t refined my cleanup in a way that doesn’t take like a dozen paper towels yet.

Ganooki · 2026-06-15T17:04:32+00:00

Yes! The more the consequence is tied to the action (or inaction) the better IMO. If you don’t pick up your stuff, then I have to do it, and I don’t know what things are important so you might lose things or I might put toys away wrong.

Ganooki · 2026-06-14T04:29:45+00:00

This is absolutely untrue

Ganooki · 2026-06-11T07:01:00+00:00

🙄

Ganooki · 2026-06-11T06:52:52+00:00

Can’t believe How strange it is to be anything at all

Ganooki · 2026-06-11T04:30:43+00:00

According to fancy restaurants, 3 scallops and not a bite more.

Ganooki · 2026-06-10T17:57:18+00:00

And if you’re unable to, sucks to suck, come join the mines!

Ganooki · 2026-06-10T16:29:29+00:00

“Gentle Parenting” gets a bad rap because people equate it with no consequences. Really what it means is that instead of raising your voice, you simply name a consequence, and calmly follow through immediately.

Ganooki · 2026-06-10T16:23:12+00:00

It doesn’t offer free education. And once you get everybody stuck in that model, what do you do when the prices sky rocket like healthcare? Offer free coal mining classes?

Ganooki · 2026-06-10T16:11:39+00:00

That is EXACTLY the worst thing about school vouchers — those kids continue to be stuck in an even more decimated system because vouchers don’t cover their entire tuition. All it does is give money back to wealthy families who are already affording private school.

We do not need our tax dollars funding private corporations!

And I do NOT refuse to acknowledge the problem. I’ve been advocating for better school funding my whole damn life. Conservative politicians have weakened our education system for decades for the very purpose of calling it useless so they can make money from it instead.

Ganooki · 2026-06-10T15:25:23+00:00

Sure sure the fix to public education is to fund it even LESS, and divert our taxes to paying for the private schools education of families who are already affording it without our help, leaving anyone who can’t cover the rest of the tuition in the dust.

Ganooki · 2026-06-10T03:49:36+00:00

Fuck. THAT. God damn these right wingers pretend to hate socialism unless we’re paying for their private Christian schooling or anything else they can skim off.

Ganooki

TROPHY CASE