Slightly more than 10 years ago, Texas provided up to 70 percent of the total budget for public education. Local government, mostly via home property taxes, provided the remaining 30 percent. Currently, those percentages are reversed and now the state is looking to provide even less to public schools in the Special Legislative Session under proposed Senate Bill 1 that seeks to cut public education financing down another 6 percent.
During the past decade legislators and various members of the elite business sector have given lip service to finding financing for Texas public education, but every year or two committees failed and fewer tax dollars were provided. The Texas Constitution outlines the state's responsibility to provide our children with a quality education; however, every year the Governor and Legislators have taken chunks of tax dollars slated for public education and have diverted them instead to various other special interests.
Few Texans should be surprised that their state wants to remove more financing from public education, since it has been doing so almost every year for the past decade. However, it is a sad commentary of a state that is almost last on the list of states providing quality public education.
Currently, it is quite clear that there has been an active push by Texas legislators to develop private education and to eliminate its responsibility for public education. In fact, many legislators already sit on the boards of private, charter and religious schools. Special interests continue to push for a voucher program to enable parents to take their children out of public schools and use the vouchers for private enrollment.
Viewing the education issue completely, we may see that the state of Texas wishes to maintain educational objectives for the wealthy elite rather than for the majority of Texans. Furthermore, by crying budget poverty Texas sees the opportunity to remove most or all tax dollars that finance public education and to divert those tax dollars to other special interests.
It is sad enough that Texas Governor Rick Perry and legislators have no problem shirking their responsibility to the majority of children in Texas by cutting the financing for public education, but, it is callous, irresponsible and un-American to remove educational opportunities for the majority of our children and their parents under the veil of secrecy and cries of state fiscal poverty.
Our legislators are trying to eliminate public education behind closed legislative doors. SB 1 is the largest attempt of any previous bill to eliminate the financing of public education for our children and it is a symptom of special interest politics permeating throughout Texas.
If the majority of voters sit back and do nothing, Texas may succeed as the first state in the US to eliminate public education.
(Courtesy of Buzzflash, written by Peter Stern is a former Director of Information Services in private industry and government, a University Professor, Public School Administrator and Teacher. He is a disabled Vietnam Veteran and holds three post-graduate degrees.)
I cannot tell you how MUCH this shit pisses me off!
The Republicans have been actively trying to destroy the public school system since back when Reagan was in office and NOBODY seems to be calling them out on it.
School vouchers, Charter schools, No Child Left Behind, these all sound like good ideas, but when you REALLY examine the agenda behind them you quickly realize that their entire purpose is to make the public school system look ineffective, and essentially broken, in order to justify taking away their funding.
Look it is no exaggeration on my part to say that I had some of the BEST public school teachers you can imagine, who spent long hours working to inspire me to channel my hyperactivity toward sports and my over active mind toward writing. Nor is it much of an exaggeration to suggest that my life was literally saved by an Assistant Principal who called me down to his office halfway through my Junior year, closed the door behind me, and proceeded to read me the riot act about getting into so many fistfights. He told me, using language I had never heard an educator use before, to straighten up and get my act together before I found myself being the smartest guy on cell block 15. He also challenged me to stop taking from the school, and to "use that ridiculous IQ of yours" to give something back.
Do you know how they say that kids never listen? Well I DID listen to him, and afterward had the best, most productive Senior year of high school anybody could ever hope to have. And if I had stubbornly refused to listen chances are I would have been expelled, and would therefore never had that very first taste of success that let me know what I could achieve when I really set my mind to it.
THAT is what my public school education did for me. And I resent the hell out of those who are trying to take that educational opportunity away from our children and grandchildren.
If you are financially capable of paying for a private school education for your child, or you prefer a charter school, more power to you, but these options should not come at the expense of a well funded public education system. Not in America.
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