funding our prison education system
and by prison education system, i’m not talking about educating convicted criminals. i’m talking about locking up our children.
ars technica has a short piece, here.
$370, 000 from the united states department of justice to install biometric access control in an elementary school in new jersey.
ars compares that to hiring someone to sit at the door… i’m going to go a bit deeper. the function of a school is education, so let’s go that direction.
according to this report [pdf], the average teacher salary in new jersey was $53,663 for the 2003-2004 school year. so that’s 6.89 teachers for the cost of a front door for a school (and i don’t know if that even includes the door…).