Next Step

Occasionally I am seized by the notion that I must say something. Most of us are prone to feelings of that sort now and again. In my case, however, the something I must say generally involves some act taken by a public figure.
This week, I have been sized by the notion that I must say something about our one and only governor’s newly proposed Next Step education reform proposal. I would earnestly encourage anybody who pays state income or sales taxes or county property taxes (and I believe that includes just about all of us) to go to the trouble to go to the state’s web site at www. accessarkansas.org then click on Governor Huckabee’s smiling face. There you will be able to read the entire Next Step plan.
Among the things you will notice is the complete lack of a section called “How I’m gonna pay for this.” Also pay particular attention to how much more the state is going to require of public school systems without providing any funding for it. Can you say Unfunded mandate? I thought you could.
As a matter of fact, by expanding the Charter School Law, the governor would actually reduce the amount of money existing public schools have to work with. Allowing parents to take their kids out of economically or academically distressed public schools and send them to charter schools which are also publically funded, instead of getting involved in their own schools and working to make them better, would, in effect, create educational ghettos where only the kids who lacked the means of leaving would remain in steadily deteriorating schools to endure poor education and its life long effects. That is the same kind of thinking that saddled American municipalities with crumbling inner city neighborhoods and industrial areas.
A lot of what the governor proposes sounds just lovely, like giving more money to those teachers who make the effort to become better teachers, making it easier to get shed of teachers who are just collecting a pay check instead of teaching kids, and expanding educational opportunities for our kids. I can think of a couple of so-called educators just right off hand who would better serve the educational system by getting a job selling shoes. Unfortunately, the governor’s proposal is long on ideas for improvements, but short on suggesting ways of paying for them.
I can tell him this much: It’s not gonna come from local revenue sources. Sorry Mike, we’re tapped out. In case it has escaped the beloved Rev. Huckabee’s notice, we’re smack dab in the middle of an economic recession.
An don’t bother to blame the 9/11 attacks for this problem. The economy was in the toilet long before September 11. It just wasn’t until then that we had a foreign bad guy to blame for it.