The GOP’s tax on school kids

by | Sep 2, 2015 | Editor's Blog, Education | 5 comments

School’s back in session and so are the asks for money to provide for school supplies. I’ve had children in the public schools for most of the past 20 years. Never have I seen the need for so many basics. In the past, the PTAs and PTOs focused on extras. They added to the playground. They raised money for field trips. They enriched the educational experience. Now, they are filling the gaps for things like paper and books left by the legislature.

A new website launched today highlights how the governor and GOP legislature are failing our schools. The site is called “How far we’ve fallen: The decline of North Carolina’s public schools.” It documents the cuts to public schools and highlights the impacts.

According the site, per pupil spending, when adjusted for inflation, is $815 below pre-recession spending. Money for text books and school supplies is down 79%. Teacher pay has dropped from 25th in the nation to 42nd. Teachers are leaving the profession because of the low pay and lousy treatment.

Republicans, for their part, argue that there’s too much fat in public schools and they’ve cut it out. They say that angered people across the political spectrum.

What Republicans really want to do is shift the financial responsibility for public schools from the state to local government. North Carolina made a decision during the Great Depression that it has an obligation to ensure a quality education for its children, regardless of whether they are from wealthy or poor areas. The GOP wants to reverse that social contract. They’re doing it by cutting funding and by passing the buck on school supplies and other necessities to families and local government. In essence, they’ve instituted an unofficial tax on school kids and families like mine have to pay it or send our kids to schools that lack the supplies necessary to teach and to learn. 

5 Comments

  1. Norma

    As a single parent, who managed on a very limited income, to raise and educate two children, I can attest to how tough it was and is. Yes, the attention and expectation of parents matter, but regardless of that, poor schools are a major problem. I also experienced that problem and had few good choices. There are plenty of examples of poor parenting skills, which can be improved and are, but not without some assistance. I personally know adults raised by welfare mothers, who are capable, ethical and hard working adults. The attitude should not be one of punishment for those lacking skills, education and money, but rather one of remedying the problems.

    Blaming the home life for school failures is too easy and an excuse. Cutting the budget for text books and school supplies by 79% is cutting essentials, not fat. Tell me any other product or service that costs less today than several years ago.

    If this state expects to attract young professionals with children, it is sadly mistaken. Poor schools are a major factor in relocation decisions, and paying for your child’s basic needs in public school is not what parents expect or should have to do.

    As for poor parents, obviously the message, is pretty much “we don’t give a damn about you or your children” and both the governor and the legislative supporters of this insanity should be ashamed. Still, I would be willing to bet that most, if not all, attend church regularly and consider themselves good Christians (mostly).

  2. Barry Westfall

    The single most detrimental force holding back the education of America’s kids lies in the home and not in the halls of our government. Asian and other foreign students that excel and repeatedly surpass American students do so because that have stable lives at home with two parents to watch over them, mentor them and push them to excel. The process begins from the first day they are born.

    Every Ivy League school plus all the other top public and private universities in America could be 100% filled every year with foreign students who have outscored US students. So, don’t blame this one on the government. Blame it on the shameful quality of life and upbringing so many young American children are receiving – many of them living with only one parent. Some of them living with relatives because their parents have abandoned them. America needs to fix this problem before its children will have a chance of keeping up globally.

    • Bradley Berthold

      Yeah, yeah. What about the fact that it takes two incomes today which is not even sufficient to support a family one income could support not long ago?
      And see how many people are trapped in low wage jobs, with no benefits and ànd staggered hours which prohibit a decent family life and child rearing?
      With an ever shrinking middle class and the huge transfer of wealth to the sliver at the top of the economy, you are blind if you see our problems as result of somehow neglectful patents!

      • Nortley

        Exactly. 35 years of Reganomics have done more damage to the family than anything Hollywood has produced, yet the Republican party still touts “family values” to distract from their total lack of interest in valuing families.

  3. Russell Scott Day

    The two legitimate duties of your government are Defense and Education. Other nations that are US allies have discovered the dangers of flawed educational systems. “Blood, Tears, and Folly” by Len Deighton details educational failures that nearly led to defeat by the NAZIs in WWII. Free Trade ideology is also credited with the slide towards second rate power of the UK starting in the 1840s with the fall of the UK manufacturing base and the rise of London Finance. The only benefit I can possibly see in the cut backs and reductions in teachers and their assistants would be a rise in peer to peer learning as systematized within the Public School systems.
    It is the education received from Kindergarden through the 6th and 7th Grades that is most crucial.
    Don’t get a kid right by 13 and they are never right.
    I question the costs of Higher Education as reflected in tuition hikes, wondering if licensure of R&D to Corporations is raised fairly in comparison. Corporations have increasingly outsourced R&D to Universities.
    What a deal it may be for these corporations to have willing Researchers paying to do the work and getting licensure for its use at rock bottom bargain prices?

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