2025 Daily - 05/23/2025

Well - quite a hiatus from writing... but here I am back.... After a morning Rotary meeting which I will discuss below... BUT first - What Are My PASSIONS... or PASSION? Long ago I felt CONSERVATION was THE THING... Conserve land, conserve plants and animals, conserve RITUALS and relate things to rituals and ways of thinking and behaving .. that were GOOD... ALSO - the idea of ZPG appealed to me over the years as Zero Population Growth would/could mean easier paths to varietes of conservation. TODAY I feel the same, generally, with a big difference and that difference is - how do we contract population while improving the quality of life for all???!!!

We always seem to want to INCREASE everything. Grow production, grow energy resources, grow worker numbers - i.e. grow population ... And this morning -- grow the number of children entering our schools in Davis, CA.... From this mornings program... some notes/thoughts? 

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so -- I have heard calls in past years for subsidies for teachers and other city workers so they can live in the locals they serve...

NOW - would we like to have subsidies for households to have children... etc...

What about The Population Explosion -- which has been contained but will it be for ever sustainable?

What specifically do we lose if Enrollment goes down?

library programs

music programs

robotic programs

sports programs

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So - what will we do? What can we do? How could all the good things about our school system continue while enrollment drops!?

AND at the meeting I think I heard it said -- we were losing Six MILLION dollars a year due to truancy. How could that be recovered? How many truant officers needed to bring back how many absentee students and what would be the cost/benefit?

AND 

What about busing students... in other words consolidating some schools from around the county and maybe from other counties... to shore up enrollment and school revenue? 

Efficiencies that come with size are questionable... yet increasing enrollments are addressing SIZE... ALSO - what cuts could be made to the DJUSD that would not impact instruction? 

Wouldn't smaller classroom size, i.e. fewer students in each class ... be advantageous to learning?

The issue at some point is: QUANTITY vs QUALITY....

Finally - what models of experience are there around the country, world... where declining enrollments proved to be positive?

MY PASSION... Reverse Population Growth... RPG!!! How can that be done with good economics!!! By good economics I mean many paths for all/most people to a good quality of life! Turn away from economics as The Dismal Science and instead ... economics as The Balancing Science... balancing Needs with Wants relative to Abilities.