Gene's Blog

Just a little rant about education

I got not one, but two, mailings this past week from my local school district, which faces severe funding shortfalls and has four funding requests up for approval on November 6th. If all four pass, property taxes will rise on my own relatively modestly priced home roughly $500 per year. Why is this necessary?

Well, first we need a little history lesson. There was a lot of back-patting a few years back when the State of Minnesota announced that it was taking over all funding for k-12 education. The idea was to alleviate the burden on local districts to raise funds through referenda and thus alleviate the burden on local property taxes, AND, the disparities in educational possibilities for those districts not filled with $400,000 plus homes – which is to say a LOT of Minnesota outside of the greater metropolitan area. The “joy” was short-lived as the Bush boom years went bust and the legislature failed to index educational funding for anything like the actual rate of inflation. Inflation has ranged between 4% and 4.5% each year and the legislature has been able to persuade our “no new taxes” Governor Pawlenty, and his henchman, David Strom to increase educational funding at 0.9% a full report of the catastrophic effect this has had on property taxes in Minnesota can be found at the Minnesota State Auditor’s report

What this “means” in real terms in just my own district, which serves 41,000 students, if the questions fail is that up to six elementary schools will close, up to two middle schools and one of five high schools – one of which is brand spanking new. We will lose up to 500 teachers, programs in art, music and physical education will be eliminated, we will lose the positions used for advanced students, those with special talents will no longer be able to fully develop them. Fees for extracurricular activities will average $500 – which will effectively price most middle and lower income students out of them completely. The number of courses a high school student can take each year will be reduced from 16 to 12 (that will really help prepare them for college!) meaning core courses only, such frills as industrial technology, business, family and consumer science, music, languages, career and technical education, music, English (hey they have to READ word problems in math people!), although that won’t be as much a difficulty as it might at first seem because also cut will be advanced math and sciences. They will, however, get more study hall time – to work on what is not clear. What does this mean? Kids will be graduating less prepared for college, technical schools AND entry level jobs. Some will not make it into college because they will not have had the advanced placement course work necessary for acceptance.

Frills like pools and swimming lessons, have been long gone, they won’t be offered again anytime soon, computers won’t be upgraded OR repaired, so kids will miss out on learning how to use the technology that is currently being outsourced to India mostly anyway, so no problem there, this district will continue to have the highest cost for athletic and other extra-curricular educational opportunities in the entire metro area and of course, with no money for textbooks, they’ll have to make do with outdated information in all classes as well. Oh, and with more kids in every classroom, none of them will have to worry about coming under the individual attention of a teacher either. They’ll be able to slide through the educational system like the ghosts our governor wishes they were.

Now for the rant. What ever happened to the idea that a well-educated populace is a good thing for this country? There was a time when we believed that it was in everyone’s best interest to educate our children. Those children are the ones who are going to be paying the taxes that support those self-centered, SUV driving, no-tax-is-a-good tax, in their dotage. If they can afford to. Which at the moment is looking just a bit doubtful.

When kids are educated well, we all win. This is such a no-brainer, that I find it impossible to understand how the great State of Minnesota, and we are NOT alone in this idiocy, has decided that NOW is the time to abandon children’s education, to in effect, throw them to the wolves, I’ve mentioned a couple times before here. I mean, come on, just how many janitors can those $500 million a year CEO’s possibly need anyway? Because that is all they are equipping this generation of students to do. Those same businessmen who loudly complain that they need more “guest worker” visa’s AND who are outsourcing every job that pays more than what a french fry cook at Mickey D’s makes, are unwilling to pay a nickel toward educating all of our children. Of course, THEIR children are fine, they’re all in charter schools learning how to NOT love their neighbors as themselves.

Hypocritical is by far too generous a word for this modern day wolves. They are eating our children alive with their refusal to understand that what is good for kids is what is good for America. Not what is good for General Motors. Kids. What is good for kids is what is good for America. That means health care, housing and education. That requires an investment in those children’s future, those children ARE our infrastructure, ignore them and we rot from within, just as a building untended within will eventually collapse on itself, just like the Washington Avenue Bridge. If you do NOT take of the infrastructure, you soon have NO structure at all. And kids are the most important asset we have. The better educated, fed, house and clothed they are, the more opportunities they have to be taught, challenged and developed, the stronger America becomes.

But we have abandoned our children. It has been a slow steady decline but it has now picked up speed. READ that report I cited above. Property taxes are NOT the way to ensure a quality education for all children all over this state. Income taxes are. The income tax is the fairest tax we have, it is progressive and based on ability to pay. It should support education fully. No more funny books, no more hiding taxes by calling them fees. Let’s see some statespeople rise and tell the truth about this issue. If Minnesota wishes to lead the nation in “leaders”, attract businesses, raise the standard of living, then the way to do it is to give our kids the best education money can buy.

And, I’d go farther. Higher education is rapidly becoming completely unreachable for all but the very richest and very brightest. Why can we not see that k-12 is only the beginning? We could fund fully a four college degree for every child who can handle the curriculum, or a technical school degree for those who can’t, for a pittance in income taxes, yet reap huge dividends because our children would be entering the workforce prepared to make real contributions. I think that “free” public education should be made available k-16, with strong assistance for those capable of going on past bachelor’s degree’s. There is no “lose” in this idea. Smarter, better educated, more well-rounded children turn into smarter, wealthier, more well-rounded adults. We ALL win under this scenario.

But we continue to be penny wise and pound foolish. We continue to make school districts come begging for handouts every couple years because we don’t have the courage to stand up and say what we have done is WRONG and it is time to fix it, for ALL of us, not just the children of the wealthy, but for all children. Does anyone really believe the next Einstein, or Najarian or Gates is only to be found among the children of the wealthy? The kid who can cure cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s is among the children being denied the basic education every child in this country should be, at one time WAS, guaranteed.

If there is ANYTHING we should be proud to invest in, in this country, it should be our children. Not bombs. We are not only not going to have smart kids we aren’t going to have kids smart enough to make the smart bombs we currently use to bully smaller nations around the globe with. Who are we going to outsource THAT work to? And where will we get the money to buy those “defensive’ weapons anyway? At the rate we are going, this next generation won’t make enough money to support unemployment taxes for half of them, let alone anything else this country needs. People, wake up. Please. CWG asks the question often, What Would Love Do Now? The answer in this instance is give the schools what they need through referenda and then elect politicians with the foresight and intelligence to realize that education MUST be a priority of the State of Minnesota. Not fancy trips to $455 a night hotels in India. We need that help here right now. We needn’t be looking for “sister cities” in India, we have a LOT of cities and towns in this state who need our help desperately. Vote yes on your referendums next week and support legislative candidates who promise to FULLY fund education for ALL children. They thank, I thank you, for your support. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene