More on public school bureaucrat duplicity
We posted earlier on how edu-crats here in Moore County have a yearly ritual of LYING their posteriors off to the public about their financial position. *Oh, the babies are going to starve! We’re going to have to pack 50 into each classroom! We’re going to put your babies in rusty old trailers, and cut art, PE and music!* (You know the drill.)
You could empty every bank account and wallet in your county, and the central office would STILL not be happy.
Well, Bob Harris, over at the Carolina Partnership for Reform, also has an interesting take on this subject:
With conservative economic reforms working, North Carolina now has a half-billion dollar budget surplus.
Fair minds can debate what to do with an extra $550 million. Return it to taxpayers? More Rainy Day savings? Teacher raises? All of the above? More on that in the coming weeks.
Here’s what legislators should NOT do: allow school bureaucrats to ignore the conservative majority’s order that class size go down in early grades.
The conservative majority passed a class size reduction. Remember?
But bureaucrats want to shift teacher money into other pet projects and claim art, music and physical education teachers have to be fired if the bureaucrats can’t stuff 24 kids in early grade classrooms so money can go into other things. Of course, the conservative majority will get the blame if class size goes up because they will have given bureaucrats the power to do it.
The whole local flexibility scheme hands Roy Cooper a club to beat Republicans over the head, elect enough Democrats to make his veto stick and kill reforms like more school choice.
The solution is easy: Don’t raise class size. Drop the local flexibility bill. Make the bureaucrats prove they really can’t fund art, music and physical education teachers within the existing $13 billion school budget. And use the budget surplus to fund them if necessary.
The class size reduction is a good reform. Don’t fall into the trap of increasing class size now.
Our local bureaucrats kept claiming they were near broke when, in reality, they were being over-funded each year by $3 million. Don’t let these central office scalawags and your drivebys fool you. Make them back up their talk. Three million extra in the bank is not NEAR BROKE.
Here’s an idea: whatever each local public school system thinks they need to fund actual teaching (not admin or support staff) positions, fund it and require it by law to be spent on that. It’s what the NCGA did with teacher assistants in the last session. Of course, the local educrats squealed like stuck pigs that they didn’t have flexibility in the use of funds, but the NCGA took an attitude of, “You say you want more money for teacher assistants, well, here it is, so you HAVE to use it on teacher assistants.”
To follow up from my reply on the previous post on this issue, here are a few more questions for the “more money for public education” crowd:
1 – Where, specifically, is the money going? Show us line items in the school system’s budget.
2 – What accountability measures are in place so that the money you want will actually be used for what you’re showing us it’ll be used for?
3 – How will the amount of money you’re seeking fix the problems you’re seeking to have addressed? For instance, if you’re trying to raise reading test scores of 4th graders, show us how allocating X amount for that will raise test scores. Don’t just say you “hope” it will happen. “Hope” ain’t a plan.
4 – What is a “cut” in the education budget? For example, in Year 1, the school system got $10 million. Somewhere, some bureaucrat, budget writer, or politician came up with some formula that shows how much the school system “needs” in a given year. The formula shows $20 million in Year 2, $30 million in Year 3, and $40 million in Year 4.(Thus, a $10 million proposed increase per year.) If the county and General Assembly decided to allocate $45 million (or even $49.9 million) in Year 5 (instead of $50 million), is that a “cut”? Explain why.
More questions….more truthful answers:
1. Well, we need more administrators first. Then if you want to see the line in the budget we have to hire an administrator to administrate that program. $100,000 per year minimum.
2. Accountability LOL! That should only for charter schools and private schools. Your government schools are wonderfully run…trust us.
3. To make this happen we will have to hire a few administrators and set up a new department. Just go ahead and send us funds in the amount of : County GDP + 25% State GDP + $1.
4. Well, a cut is when anything less than our rainbows and unicorns pie in the sky budget is approved for $1 less than the request. Basically the formula for a cut is County GDP + 25% State GDP – $1. Why is this so? The children…think of the children!
Cack34 is right. Make the system define the ‘requirements’ such that the tax-payer understands them, prioritize them, and then allocate funds proportionally according to those priorities. Entirely possible that somewhere down that list of priorities, we run out of money, and will not fund some things this year (or ever). Music, PE and art are found somewhere on this priority list and may or may not be funded. It is what mature adults do and tax-payers expect.
The state needs to require districts to have CENTRAL PURCHASING with procedures for bids at a lower level of expenditure and no ways to skirt it, more transparency like public opening and other checks. They need to require checkbooks to be posted online. Some states like Delaware do already. We need to add requirements for school board office eligibility like not being married to an employee (as in Texas) which is a huge conflict of interest and checking credentials like we do for our teachers and other staff including education, residency, and even financial interest that may be potential conflicts.
And, on another note … we are being treated to an unprecedented scene of sedition daily in our so-called media; we see the Deep State aligned against We The People. It cannot escape the reality that much of the anti-Constitutional ideology driving these event was planted in young heads, day-in day-out, six hours per day, in our public schools, paid for by We The People, the tax-payer. As we examine the resourcing of our public schools, we must also examine the purposes that our schools have been converted to, at great monetary and moral cost to the Nation.
ANY requirement – That ANY state or federal agency places on us (Us = Local) – Should be funded by the government making the requirement.
It is so easy to pass a law – Brag about it – And then go back to Raleigh while leaving us to figure out how to pay for it.