Republicans in the North Carolina legislature are trying to reconfigure how public schools are funded in the state. The constitution says that school funding is the responsibility of the state, but the GOP wants to pass the buck to local government. To do it, they’re passing unfunded mandates that put financial pressure on local schools and force difficult choices that will adversely affect students. They may also be handing Democrats a potent political issue.
The GOP-controlled legislature has ordered schools to reduce class size in grades K-3 but have failed to offer funding to pay for new teachers and classrooms necessary to meet the requirement. Instead, they’ve told local school systems, “You figure it out.” To do so, systems are looking at increasing class sizes in higher grades, ending non-academic classes like music, art and PE and making teachers trained in other subjects teach the lower grades with lower class sizes. The law could also result in last minute student re-assignments, always a contentious issue.
Republicans have been cutting public school budget since they took power in 2011. To make up for the loss of revenue and to meet the new class size regulations, schools are turning to local governments. It’s a way to pass school funding responsibility to school systems. It may cause pain for students and schools systems now, but it will likely cause pain for Republicans at the ballot box in 2018.
Voters in North Carolina are well aware that state government is responsible for the quality of our public schools. We’re not a state that forces local governments to bear the brunt of funding. When kids are reassigned, music classes cancelled and more classes are held in “mobile classrooms” (otherwise known as trailers), parents will take out their wrath on legislators, not school board members.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Knowledge is power. Simple premise. So is the Republican premise that lauds the under-educated and knowledge deficient.
Education is and always has been the pathway to prosperity for those in social classes other than the ones that inherit their wealth. Republicans know that too. Why else do they attempt time after time, to change education, to shift burdens, change curriculums, take money away, try to prove that public education doesn’t work and thus, their followers demand “choices” in their child’s future. All things that take away from the most to give to the few; to benefit the privileged; to ensure that those in the lower social strata stay there and remain ignorant of the ways of those in the upper echelon.
Republicans don’t want Free Speech; they don’t want people seeking redress of grievance. They don’t want educated and literate people. That causes problems for them. They want an obedient populace who are just smart enough and educated enough to do the manual labor of their vision of the nation and world.
What we’re seeing is the second prong of a bifurcated and well crafted attack. The first prong was the dismantling of organized labor and the job market that destabilized the middle class and upper lower classes. No jobs and no organized labor equal people who can’t afford better education and are educated to the minimal level of high school graduate. Thus, the second prong; reducing the quality of that basic education or perhaps even the opportunity to obtain it to a level that probably hasn’t been seen or experienced since the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
Republicans know exactly what they’re doing and now, they know how to accomplish it. The question that Thomas raises is going to be the most perplexing in the next election as the resultant outcomes will tell the tale of success or failure for Republicans and the people. If Republicans return to absolute power in the next election cycle, they have succeeded. If not, then their policies and dogma have failed and rightly so.
It’s going to hinge on the electorate. Is there a majority of citizens who want an opportunity at a better life for their children and grandchildren through a well-rounded educational foundation? Or, is there a majority of citizens who want nothing better for themselves and no opportunity for their children and grandchildren through systematic dismantling of the public education system? Yes, I include the electorate of today because the children of today are going to be the earners and supporters of the system we have tomorrow.
It is paramount upon us all to chose wisely and making good choices comes with a strong educational foundation.
What a great summary of what is taking place these days. Please consider sending your comments to the News and Observer in the hopes that it will be published on the editorial page.
The House voted almost unanimously for a bill to partly fix this but the Senate has not acted yet. Might it help if all of us reading this blog sent an email or called Senator Phil Berger who has the power to bring this to a vote? I don’t have the bill number handy is it HB13?
Look no further than Bob Luddy, founder of Thales Academies. He is a millionaire (possible billionaire), Koch brothers disciple and attendee at their twice yearly meetings, and a BIG contributor to the GOP.
Every media outlet that reports a Trump twitter, a Trump insult, and a Trump Lie without using a caption at the bottom that identifies the item as false is still reporting his lies as though they are truth. And if they can’t fact check that fast, then delay the so called news.
Infowars and Breitbart are two.
And yet, every one of those GOP legislators would probably be first in line to remove children from parents should the latter not adequately feed and shelter their children. The failure to to properly fund public education is also mistreatment and abuse of children with life long consequences for them and the society of which they are a part. Passing that responsibility to others is not just a cop-out, it shows a calloused indifference to the fate of these children. Am I surprised? NO.
SOBs.
The plot in the story is clear. Republicans in the NCGA are criticized for not funding schools well enough to keep up with increasing enrollments in a fast-growing state. Those higher enrollments have resulted in packed classrooms (i.e., higher teach-student ratios) statewide, So the GOP enacts a law that requires lower teacher-student ratios in K-3 classes, but, of course, do not provide the dollars necessary at the school district level to offer additional classrooms and the teachers needed to teach in them.
So, in short, an NCGOP lawmakers tout and mandate a very good thing (i.e., smaller class sizes/lower teach-student ratios), a thing that every thinking and caring parent and voter would support, but, in sly fashion, fail to supply the dollars needed to make that good thing happen.
It’s indeed an unfunded mandate, and a mischievous one at that. It’s also another furtive action by the NCGOP to underfund and undermine public schools, and thus to make certain that public schools appear “broken” and the state appears justified in advancing the privatization of public education in NC via charter schools and private school vouchers.
Don’t get hoodwinked by further NCGOP scams like this; it’s just another action by the NCGOP to undermine public education in NC., Vote against them and get your friends, family, and acquaintances to votes against them, too!
The simple solution would be to stop voting these immoral stooges into office. Sadly, they sell their brand of fake Jesus, which the typical North Carolinian is willing to buy. “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”
Or, perhaps they will become so unattractive and ineffective, that families will opt for the vouchers, privates, charters, virtual, home school options that Republicans favor in our state and nationally.
Watch what I do–not what I say.
Control local governments and schools, pass on state responsibilities and the bills, but don’t provide the money and support. I remember the GOP cries of “stop sending mandates down” from the Federal government to the States. Discovering the realities of power and running the government–a learning experience at national and state levels.