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You are paying for education, transportation, and food. Are you sure privatizing that is a comparable price tag? I would like to see some evidence.

pseudo0 5y ago
With the COVID pods, parents would handle food (often not provided by public schools anyways), transportation, and providing a location to teach. From talking to people in those situations though, the main cost was by far the tutor or instructor. Dropping the kids off or loaning out your dining room is pretty trivial compared to $1-2k per child per month in tutoring fees. Again though, I suggested adding it as a publicly funded option, not making it mandatory. If parents preferred a traditional school, they could do that instead. My point was that we could support alternative models like this with existing public funding, and it would benefit the children who perform better in a small classroom environment.
- Iefthandrule 5y ago
  The annual cost cited earlier is not referring to COVID pods, so I would like evidence that the cost is comparable long-term.
  - pseudo0 5y ago
    Okay, taking Baltimore as an example, if you have a pod with five children, that's a total budget of $100k for the year. From some quick googling, Baltimore teachers have an average salary of just over $60k, but let's make it say $80k for a tutor to include the value of teacher benefits. That leaves a $20k cushion for food, field trips, classroom supplies, etc. This basic structure is something that homeschoolers have been doing for decades as well, with $0 government assistance. In that case, you typically have a co-op arrangement where the parents share teaching duties for a small group of children. It's difficult but possible, and government funding would go a long way towards making those sorts of models accessible to more families. Right now it virtually requires a parent working part-time, which is something a lot of households struggle to afford.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

pseudo0 5y ago

With the COVID pods, parents would handle food (often not provided by public schools anyways), transportation, and providing a location to teach. From talking to people in those situations though, the main cost was by far the tutor or instructor. Dropping the kids off or loaning out your dining room is pretty trivial compared to $1-2k per child per month in tutoring fees. Again though, I suggested adding it as a publicly funded option, not making it mandatory. If parents preferred a traditional school, they could do that instead. My point was that we could support alternative models like this with existing public funding, and it would benefit the children who perform better in a small classroom environment.

Iefthandrule 5y ago
The annual cost cited earlier is not referring to COVID pods, so I would like evidence that the cost is comparable long-term.
- pseudo0 5y ago
  Okay, taking Baltimore as an example, if you have a pod with five children, that's a total budget of $100k for the year. From some quick googling, Baltimore teachers have an average salary of just over $60k, but let's make it say $80k for a tutor to include the value of teacher benefits. That leaves a $20k cushion for food, field trips, classroom supplies, etc. This basic structure is something that homeschoolers have been doing for decades as well, with $0 government assistance. In that case, you typically have a co-op arrangement where the parents share teaching duties for a small group of children. It's difficult but possible, and government funding would go a long way towards making those sorts of models accessible to more families. Right now it virtually requires a parent working part-time, which is something a lot of households struggle to afford.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]