school budgets

As public school students head home for the summer, it's time for their parents to start worrying about how they're going to pay for next year. Pay? For public school? Unfortunately, yes, Just as Ron Weasley's parents worried when they had to buy five sets of Gilderoy Lockhart's entire oeuvre for...

Record numbers of New Jerseyans voiced their anger at high property taxes and voted down over 50% of school budgets. With state finances squeezed all over the country, it signals that school funding will get even more politically contentious.

Parents and politicians tend to agree a lot on this one: the smaller the classroom, the better. For good reason, of course. Studies have shown that children, especially if they're already ambitious and driven to learn, get far more out of a class the fewer other children in it. Which is why it's...

When I was pregnant with my first child, we bought a house in our old high school's neighborhood, so I already know what I'm in for: a life of raising money for the school, which has long used the parent groups to fund programs the district wouldn't. I also already know many of the ways my money...