WBTV news (click on red camera icon to see video) in Charlotte asks this difficult question of House budget makers.
Some who supported the budget say the state's poor economic situation left
them with little choice but to raise taxes and eliminate the teachers.
Folks at the conservative Civitas Institute disagree.
"I think there's definitely some political gamesmanship on how they're trying
to sell this to the public," said Brian Balfour who is with the Civitas
Institute.
To back up his point, Balfour compiled a list of
things he says may be worthwhile, but most people would not
think were more important than keeping teachers on the payroll.
See the list they are referencing here.
On a related note, I spoke to Tara Servatius on WBT radio in Charlotte yesterday about the same list. She seemed particularly puzzled that the Ergonomics Center at NC State is still slated to receive more than half a million in state funds, while some leading advocacy groups are warning that "people will die" due to cuts in the HHS budget.
How many lives could be saved by the $18 million in the One North Carolina Fund – the Governor's "golden handshake" money for corporate welfare handouts? How many lives could be saved by the $13 million budgeted for the NC Symphony, NC Arts Council, and Tryon Palace?
If House leadership cares so much about teachers in the classroom and help for developmentally disabled children – why were those items cut but so many other questionable items considered untouchable?
Brian, I heard you yesterday on WBT, and generally, I appreciate what you’ve done here–someone definitely should be doing this, and one wishes it were our elected officials! A note of caution, though … some of the stuff you’ve highlighted here really is up for reasonable debate and not quite as cut and dry as it might seem, certainly not deserving of the kind of sneering treatment Tara was giving it. For example, you both made a big deal out of “shellfish sanitation.” Following a hunch, I Googled the term, and sure enough, this relates to “monitoring and classifying coastal waters as to their suitability for shellfish harvesting for human consumption.” (See http://www.deh.enr.state.nc.us/shellfish/shellfish.htm.) I can’t speak to whether these fine folks do their job particularly well or not, and I don’t know if I’m getting $1.7 million worth of value out of their work, but I’d at least be willing to consider some potential merit that might accrue from not getting sick from eating bad oysters.
Likewise, with regard to spending $18.8 million on Learn & Earn High Schools to allow HS students to take college courses for credit for free, I’d entertain a real debate on whether we get more long-term value out of a program that gives a kid a head start on college coursework than by throwing that same $18.8 million at most of the workaday nonsense that passes for education in NC public schools. Your premise yesterday that the program has only been running since 2005 is completely irrelevant to answering the question of whether or not it’s a good investment.
Those are just a couple of examples in which I think you’ve put forth weak or questionable arguments against these expenditures, in my opinion, and I’m on your side! The political zeitgeist is not in our favor at this point in time; we don’t do ourselves any favors by not building a strong case, and we certainly don’t help matters by being smug about it in the manner in which Tara conducted herself yesterday. If we want to be taken seriously (as I think we should be, but good luck with that!), we have to be more serious than those with whom we disagree. Lord knows they’re not being serious about it.
Rev. Mike,
Thanks for reading Red Clay Citizen and for your feedback.
The point I was raising was not whether or not funding for these programs is a “good investment” but rather: should those programs take priority over services for developmentally disabled children or school teachers? After all, it is House leadership that is telling us the specific cuts they proposed were “necessary.” But when you examine some of the programs not cut, one begins to wonder just how necessary it is to cut teachers and social services while other programs such as shellfish sanitation are not.
I think these are the questions we should be asking of our elected officials during this budget “crisis.”
$18.8 million are spent to allow students to take college level classes?
I graduated from Enloe high school in 2008. At Enloe, I took at least 8 AP/College-level classes. I don’t think I saw a cent of this “$18.8 million”. Every year, I had to pay close to $100 per AP exam, maybe more. One of my classes, AP Physics C, required two exams. You must take the exams to get college credit at most universities.
Based on this, I would be willing to assert that this money is not being used efficiently and could stand to be cut partially or entirely from the budget.
Brian, come to think of it, re-reading your post, you were actually pretty clear about that. Unfortunately, I didn’t read it carefully enough and instead ended up responding to what I heard on WBT yesterday. Your point is very clear here where it wasn’t yesterday because it got lost on account of Tara’s “shellfish sanitation … isn’t that the STUPIDEST thing you’ve ever heard of” response to nearly every item you pointed out. My apologies for not reading closer.
Regarding “good investment,” I think that is EXACTLY the line of reasoning we should be taking. When I consider that my children can score 4’s on NC EOGs and yet still only be considered “proficient” when compared with NAEP, I really do have to question whether my “investment” in teachers is really such a great bargain, especially when they carp at every opportunity about “how dare we” try to hold them accountable, even on this bare minimum standard. I’m all but ready to home school, in which case, what good does a state-paid teacher do me? My answer to our opponents would be to ask them to show me how the teacher produces a better product than the biologist in the shellfish sanitation program. Again, good luck on that one. Since the only people here in Charlotte who lost their jobs appear to be ones who needed to lose them anyway (assuming these first ones were performance-based), I say keep my oysters edible and let’s move on.
Zack, I suspect that this money has nothing to do with AP. CMS has a “middle college high school” program at CPCC’s Cato campus, and the kids there take college-level classes for credit, receiving a high school diploma AND, if I recall correctly, an associate’s degree at the same time when they do their last two years there. They can then transfer those credits within the UNC system. I think that is what this funding item is about, and if that’s the case, then maybe the distinction between this and AP may be semantic, but for my part I think it’s probably a good investment in kids that will have the gumption to take a run at it. With AP classes it’s harder to tell when you have school districts putting kids in those classes and testing them in pursuit of that much-coveted (sic!) Newsweek rating. Some of those kids arguably are diluting that program for persons like you who were serious about the process.
For more regarding Learn & Earn High Schools – see this link:
http://www.nclearnandearn.gov/learnEarnHighschools.aspx