SCHOOLS: Too many districts, not enough discipline

Glad to see physical fitness testing back in public schooling, I just wish the public schools in America would pick up their standards for scholastics. Our public schools are way behind many other major countries in scholastic aspects, and massive amounts of money are spent on students in many parts of the US improve poor results. Is it lack of self-discipline or what? Is the problem to increase better quality higher scholastic standards? 

I grew up in ’50s and ’60s public schooling education, I don’t remember lack of discipline by the many schools I attended. I got paddled many times for acting up or goofing off. That really gave me a more positive attitude to education and gave me a much stronger control over my self-discipline. In high school we had dress codes, hair codes and attitude codes! 

And they even had a shooting range where we could bring small-caliber rifles to shoot! We had President JFK’s fitness standards, no cellphones or computers, and most lunches we had to bring from home, no school-provided lunches.

It appears by what I’ve seen of public schooling now that it really needs a lot of changes to improve the systems! Bring back the good old days and do away with 115 public school districts in Idaho! Reduce it down to 44, one public school district per county. Cut the costs to taxpayers. 

Many states have one district per county, like our neighbor south of us. Nevada has 23 counties and less than 26 public school districts. In my 36 years in Nevada, I never saw one school levy to fund public schools! Consider that idea, Idaho!

MONTE HILLMAN

Kootenai County