[Speed Gibson,
Wednesday March 26, 2008 at 10:15am]
Education Funding: Reality
Monday, I posited that K-12 Education is at best the number four priority at the Legislature, behind pork, light rail (which is also pork), and welfare. The new DFL deficit-closing proposal again confirms that the DFL won't cut HHS; it's the foundation of their push for "universal" health care.
Add to that premise this next assertion. Had the Legislature somehow added $1 billion to the budget five years ago, we would now be in roughly the same situation today. Education Minnesota and the other unions would have negotiated accordingly. As a corollary, passing the equivalent in referendums would produce the same result.
There comes a time when you just have to say that this ain't working. By "you" I mean the School Boards. By "this" I mean the DFL "feed you with an eyedropper" paradigm. The DFL talks a lot about education funding, but not enough to put it ahead of stadiums, fish tanks, light rail trains, and hockey arenas. In a perverse way, given that the vast majority of the pork winds up in DFL districts, only in Republican districts does K-12 Education get a greater percent of the largess.
Here in District 281, a great deal of effort at several levels goes toward lobbying the Legislature. Again, this ain't working. So why are we (281) pretending that it does?
My question for the next post: what if we quit the game?
Add to that premise this next assertion. Had the Legislature somehow added $1 billion to the budget five years ago, we would now be in roughly the same situation today. Education Minnesota and the other unions would have negotiated accordingly. As a corollary, passing the equivalent in referendums would produce the same result.
There comes a time when you just have to say that this ain't working. By "you" I mean the School Boards. By "this" I mean the DFL "feed you with an eyedropper" paradigm. The DFL talks a lot about education funding, but not enough to put it ahead of stadiums, fish tanks, light rail trains, and hockey arenas. In a perverse way, given that the vast majority of the pork winds up in DFL districts, only in Republican districts does K-12 Education get a greater percent of the largess.
Here in District 281, a great deal of effort at several levels goes toward lobbying the Legislature. Again, this ain't working. So why are we (281) pretending that it does?
My question for the next post: what if we quit the game?