The fiscal news for all Pennsylvania schools continues to look bleak; see this article, “School districts here face funding challenges” from today’s (March 9) Lancaster Newspapers.

There is an excellent website you may want to investigate: http://www.ted.org/. “TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.”

We find it worthwhile to drop in there from time to time; the invigorating and challenging ideas that are shared there come from the world’s brightest minds.

This ten-minute talk by Bill Gates is a look at the looming crisis in American education. “America’s school systems are funded by the 50 states. In this fiery talk, Bill Gates says that state budgets are riddled with accounting tricks that disguise the true cost of health care and pensions and weighted with worsening deficits — with the financing of education at the losing end.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_how_state_budgets_are_breaking_us_schools.html