[Bogue]

Fair enough if you disagree on the online school idea, I did say it was a radical concept.

I disagree completely that socialization can only take place at school facilities. For one thing, social interaction between young people increasingly takes place online. Those of you familiar with the world of the "Gamers" can see the high degree of interactivity between individuals that is the future of that area & how it could apply in other arenas. I also think that it's worth noting that not all social interaction that takes place at school is a positive for children. Bullying, peer pressure, & social stratification (cliques, etc.) can be MUCH more isolating than home school & can actually have a negative effect on a child's social achievement. Besides, studies already show there to be no major difference between home-school kids and public school kids on social skills. I did also mention that there's no reason athletics or other after school programs would have to be eliminated in order to homeschool... look at Tim Tebow, for an obvious example. Community sports organizations like city football and baseball leagues can cover that function just as easily while arrangements at community centers could be made to cover the rest. Social skills WERE taught in this country prior to the advent of mandatory schooling. All we would be doing is returning to the original model.

badrock, glitches & power outages are already represented in the current physical set up by teacher error (no one's perfect, not calling anyone out on that... Teachers end up w/ tons to grade) & by sick days & inclement weather. If you consider those last two issues akin to power outages then you just make up the time at a later date & have a setup that "forgives" a certain amount of missed time (like sick days kids already have). The system being hacked is a definite concern, but there's an awful lot of business, entertainment, & education conducted online safely. If a facebook app can correctly quiz me on the capitals of Europe why can't the state of AL? If the UA can give me a college algebra course entirely online why can't the state of AL do the same for HS math? Not only that but having the courses online would remove the sad disparity between the course offerrings given in wealthier/larger districts and those in poorer/smaller ones.

Nouveau, I was mentioning how schools could save money in some areas so that it could be put back into other areas, not so that it could just be saved & unspent. Just trying to be clear on that. We live in a state with finite financial resources & can't really hope to keep up w/ all the things we need to spend on in order to catch up to where we need to be w/o juggling things around or making some fundamental changes, but I agree w/ you completely that there's a lot that can be done in that area by way of more efficient building and maintenance policy. Thank you for bringing it up.