Not concerned about budget cuts to public education? Then you are NOT paying attention

[JPZenger]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12029/1206457-109.stm?cmpid=newspanel#ixzz1kqx0UiUQ

Excerpts:

"What if you knew that your children's teachers have been talking lately with school administrators about how many more desks they can fit into their classroom next September? ...Bottom line: How many teachers, aides and classes can your school get by without -- who can be let go? That's the conversation. Last year, Gov. Corbett proposed cuts to education that were so steep that even his Republican colleagues in the Legislature wouldn't accept them. In the end, they put some money back in, but the state still hit K-12 education with an unprecedented $860 million in cuts. Pittsburgh Public Schools saw nearly $26 million disappear -- 14.3 percent of its state funding. The neediest districts took the biggest hits, but this isn't about haves versus have-nots.

The annual expenditure per pupil in Pennsylvania is about $10,700. The annual expenditure per prisoner is about $33,000. That means that for every dollar we spend on public education, we're spending about $3.08 on our prison population. In 2007, one in 28 adults in Pennsylvania was incarcerated, on probation or on parole. Pennsylvania's incarceration rate has increased 280 percent since 1982. Voluminous research documents the link between education or the lack thereof, criminal activity and incarceration. Study after study has concluded that education is a proven investment that keeps people out of jail. Yet our Legislature continues to invest more in incarcerating Pennsylvanians than it does in educating them. PA's child poverty rate worsened from 15 percent in 2000 to 19 percent in 2010. That's 522,000 living, breathing boys and girls just like your kids, just like mine, except maybe they don't have enough to eat or a safe place to live.

... poor kids are affected by those declines at a much greater rate than kids whose families are better off. In a nutshell, they're more likely to start out with an inferior pre-school and elementary education that leaves them less prepared for high school and less prepared to go on to college, that is, if they manage to graduate high school (poor kids are more likely to drop out). Ultimately, a lot of these kids end up trapped in a multi-generational pattern of low education rates, low employability and high poverty. The irony is a better education would leave them better equipped to get a good job, earn a decent income, pay more in taxes and contribute more overall to society. A 2007 study by the Brookings Institution found that improving education outcomes could result in national savings between $7.9 billion and $10.8 billion annually in public assistance, food stamps and housing assistance.

We need to change the conversation from, "How much money do our districts need to survive?" to "How much money do our districts need to thrive? To save our favorite teachers? To save our foreign language classes? Our teacher's aides, our counselors, our school libraries?"

[Kalidurga]

1. Education funding reform should be on the table.

I am not talking about giving lottery money to schools either, like that worked. That money was supposed to fund "extra" things like art and music. But, instead I keep hearing these programs are being cut in many schools including my daughters high school (thankfully this is her last year), the money is instead being spent on the basics as the school budget for basics keeps shrinking.

I can't think of a more ineffectual way to fund schools than property taxes. Basically you are asking a lot of people on fixed incomes to voluntarily raise their taxes. People that have finished paying off the house, but still have to pay hundreds of dollars a month to live there. People that have had cost of their prescriptions go up and up and up and keep having services they need cut. It is insane then of course there are other people that don't really want to see their property taxes raised because it is their first home and they are raising a family on a lot less money than they anticipated having because a job they had was outsourced.

I think we should just put fewer people in prison for non violent crimes and perhaps some property crimes( not exactly non - violent) and use that savings to fund schools. There are probably other places that the budget could be tweeked in order to give more money to education, I would be willing to take the tax free status away from religions for example. Or maybe we could hold bake sales for prison funding and forget about tax dollars going there except for violent criminals of course.