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Soapbox contributor: Sylvie Galloway
Today I am reading the Spartanburg Herald-Journal during lunch, noticed the piece about local politics, knowing I’d be reading more of that here, when I came across this in the “other news” segment. This is news that is deemed not important enough to get decent coverage.
“Sanford signs bill, SC schools get budget freedom: A new law will allow South Carolina schools to suspend programs such as character education and SAT improvement to help keep teachers employed amid budget cuts. Gov. Mark Sanford signed into law Tuesday a measure that allows districts to shift money around. It allows schools to increase class sizes, suspend some testing and furlough teachers. The law also gives school officials an extra month to hand out teachers’ contracts.”
What bothers me about this so-called “budget freedom” is that the governor is doing nothing to help our education system at all funding wise, other then giving districts more freedom to slash jobs and tighten their budgetary belts even further. So I ask this. IF we have an education lottery, WHY isn’t it being dipped into to help … education???
Yeah, it helps with scholarships of which my daughters benefit from, but those scholarships are never more then a few thousand dollars a year per student. Surely there is more. How is it being used? Other then small scholarships and to pay on the occasional winner? Then there is this. IF we are supposed to be working so hard to make our education system better, to help ensure that our children have a brighter future, then why is education the first entity in the state to feel the budget crunch? Now our local teachers are going to once again have to do more with more students with less. Yeah that’s progress alright.
Am I just out of the loop here or is there something smelly about all of this?
Have something to say in response? Post your thoughts in the comments.
Reader Soapbox
The SC lottery sales totaled $992 million in 08/09′ and transferred more than $266 million for educational programs.
Here’s SC’s education budget:
http://www.budget.sc.gov/OSB-faq.phtm
Sanford’s plan is laid out here:
http://www.scgovernor.com/priorities/education/
..Which proposes one district per county, promoting competition by introducing more chartered schools, providing tax credits and vouchers to parents of children in failing schools, and a single weighted funding formula, which basically means less bureaucracy in the system, exemplified here:
http://tinyurl.com/school-choice-SC
(from above link)“Public schools in South Carolina began this last year (08/09′) with $11,480 per student. [which] ought to be enough for a world class K-12 education system. That’s almost twice the national average of $6,600 for private school tuition.”
Times are tough, but it seems his ideas have merit when it comes to cost effectiveness.
Also of interest:
“Half the states in the country are now involved in litigation over education funding, arguing for education equity between rich and poor districts. The article says the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind initiative is partially to blame.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20727-2004Jun6.html
You’ve pretty much hit the nail on the head there Sylvie. Funding education through the lottery was always a bad idea. Lottery revenue is always fickle with more coming in some years than others. Don’t get me wrong, the Hope and Life scholarships are wonderful, but there’s no reason the same thing couldn’t have been done with a more reliable revenue stream.
Education should be the LAST thing we cut. A quality public education system is absolutely essential to economic growth. How can we expect to bring in new businesses that pay decent wages if we continue to perform so abysmally when it comes to education? How can we expect to improve our public education system by slashing funding and laying off teachers? These are precarious times for our state, and it’d be nice if our politicians would get their priorities straight.
I can understand streamlining districts, especially after having a child go to an “out of district” school and having to pay 1800 a year to go to a school that was actually closer to our house (the joys of living on the edge of your district.) But instead of vouchers, why not instead infuse money and resources in those “failing schools” so they do better?
As for the lottery. Only about a third goes to actual education??? May I ask why? Seems to me that it isn’t a very effective method to raise money for our schools if education only gets that much. We can do much better.
The &11,000 per student spent in public schools? How is it spent? What is the breakdown? It sure would be nice to have insight there. Can we bring down costs and raise quality? Sure, but are they considering that without hamstringing actual education in the classroom? Again?
I hope that sound methods are implemented to make our schools something others want to models themselves after. But back to my original point. Why does the state have to cut the education budgets first?