Talk:Littlestown, Pennsylvania
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[edit] Unsourced controversy
From the "Teacher Strike and School Board Controversy" section, I have again removed the following: "The School Districts academic responsibility has also been criticized. In 2003 the High School added a new gymnasium when government textbooks listed Ronald Regan as the current president."
Reasons: - Whether or not the District's fiscal (not "academic") responsibility has been criticized is unsourced. It would be more noteworthy if a school district's fiscal decisions were NOT questioned, thus a reliable source is all the more important to demonstrate that the controversy is verifiably noteworthy.
- The adding of a new gym in 2003 is unsourced: when was the decision made? Was funding from unrestricted or dedicated sources? Was the decision "out of the blue" or was the need well-established or possibly even forced in some why by mandates from the Feds or other sources? While not all of these are relevant to the inclusion of the "fact" in WP, they are elements of a discussion which may have been undertaken if there was a verifiable public controversy.
- Who made the tie between the age of "government" (not a meaningful link, BTW) texts and the addition of the gym? ANYONE can criticize ANY decision of this nature from thousands of different perspectives. Essentially, it's a question of values. Given limited resources, which is a spending priority:
- replacing existing (approved) textbooks for one class with "newer" textbooks which may or may not: be significantly more up-to-date (content is still likely to be at least 10 years old, given approval timelines for such things), be "better" in some fundimental way )other than answering who was president after the 1980s) for a survey course aimed at covering a very broad topic - adding a new gym, which may or may not: address a mandate, provide a revenue source, answer concerns/demands from some taxpayers, etc. - funding other programs: school lunches, Head Start, Sex Ed, sports/activities, AP courses, counciling, community relations, etc. - funding other infrastructure: science labs in classrooms, desks and chairs, computers, lunch room/kitchen, auditorium, land aquisition and maintanence, heat/plumbing, improvements/upgrades, etc. - funding operating costs/resources: office supplies, texts for classes, gym equiptment, salaries, utilities, cleaning, repairs, etc. - cutting vs. maintaining vs. raising taxes - increasing vs. maintaining vs. cutting current debt
Citing one isolated "fact" to imply the current age of one class's text does not demonstrate that any meaningful source connected this particular text to the building of the gym 4 years ago. Mdbrownmsw 13:06, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
