Middle school student at failing public school hospitalized after on-campus drug use
The budgets increase. Meanwhile, students suffer…
Last week I wrote about the going-rate for pot gummies in high school. Parents tend to think the schools their children attend do not have the same drug problem they read about elsewhere. Maybe they are right. But that’s not the case for this south Atlanta school.
A middle school student has been hospitalized. The reason? They ate some kind of “controlled substance.” That’s drugs to you and me. Here are the details, few as they may be:
ATLANTA — A middle school student was hospitalized Wednesday after ingesting a controlled substance, officials said.
According to a spokesperson with Atlanta Public Schools, the student attends Young Middle School on Benjamin E. Mays Drive in southwest Atlanta.
A spokesperson for the Atlanta Fire Department initially told 11Alive that four children were transported to Grady Hospital around 2:50 p.m., but Kimberly Willis Green with APS later clarified that only one student was affected. The student’s current condition is unknown.
No other details on what exactly the student ingested were available. The incident is being investigated the Atlanta Public Schools Police Department.
BIG-BUDGET SCHOOL SYSTEM
Young Middle School is part of the Atlanta Public School System. According to their 2017 fiscal year budget hand-out, their FY 2016 operating budget was $685.6 million. They had about 50,754 students enrolled, K through 12. When you do the math, that amounts to a public school cost of approximately $13,500 per student. But that excludes factors like debt payments and capital projects. If you take the total 2016 budget of a little over $1 billion, that amounts to right at $20,000 per student.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the national average per student was about $12,300 in 2013, including debt service and capital expenses for property. So, depending on which factors you include and exclude, the Atlanta Public School system is on par, if maybe a little higher than, the national average cost per student.
And yet, when you go to SchoolDigger.com and look up Young Middle School, you see it stinks. It’s ranked 490th out of 538 Georgia middle schools. As the city’s overall public school budget has been increasing over the last several years, SchoolDigger presents a chart showing what has happened to the test score average at Young:
Statewide performance is the same: years of decline.
GETTING A RAW DEAL
The parents who send their children to Young Middle School are being cheated. Their kids are getting a lousy education. Not only that, but they are being exposed to drugs. The parents of this particular child are worried about their child’s health because they ingested a controlled substance at a failing school.
The budgets increase. Teacher salaries increase. And so do administrator salaries, too. Meanwhile, test scores decline, and the kids are having medical emergencies that require they be carried away by ambulance to the hospital. Hopefully the student will make a full recovery.
The parents should pull their children out and let them study online through the Khan Academy. It’s free, but it is based on Common Core. The parents may not have much money. If they want to pay a little more for a much better education, they can go to the Ron Paul Curriculum. Their kids will become great writers and leaders.
But whatever they do, leaving their kids in that cesspool is not the answer.
