I was talking to a teacher friend of mine from Texas this morning. She said that a news story she heard yesterday indicated that the legislature is ready to throw in the towel on school finance after both bills were shot down.
This, my friends is a travesty, the State Legislature of one of the largest states in the union can not agree upon a spending bill for their school system. My gut reaction is that this will happen, an emergency spending bill will passed that does nothing to solve any problems and all session the representatives will spend time talking about how important it is that they straighten this out for the children. But, they will not pass a meaningful bill to fund the school districts, but I’m sure they will pass a bill that will save some endangered frog from human encroachment, or indicate that we must only buy free trade coffee for use in state run facilities. PUHLEASE, as if that is going to result in any meaningful advancement on state/public work, when what we really need are legislators in all 50 states and at the federal level to be willing to take a chance and push for a Bill that will help us as Americans.
In the case of Texas school funding the NEA will be no help, they will spend another legislative session crying about voucher programs and making resolutions to make their conferences fragrance free and boycotting Wal-Mart.
It is sad the state of affairs in American Politics. Its all talk and no action on any real issues. Terrorism linked to ineffective Immigration policies is our biggest concern in the country…but do we overhaul to immigration process? No we open our borders more by making it impossible to search potential terrorist on flights and by not allowing our Border Patrols to actually arrest illegals. Hell, we have City governments in this country telling their Police Agencies that they will not in any circumstances question the immigration status of anyone. Hello, People, the 19 men that flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were not tourists…they were here after emigrating illegally!
It’s truly sad…to cry almost certainly means accepting defeat at the ineffectiveness of the American Political System, but to laugh at the absurdity of it means we recognize it for the circus it is, and the laughter only serves to spur the clowns onto greater and dumber acts.
2 comments:
This is not just Texas. It is happening across the US and it is getting worse by the year.
Do some reading on the recent school funding debacle in Kansas. It took the State Supreme Court to step in (and over their bounds perhaps?) to force the state legislature to find the money that Kansas schools would need for the upcoming school year.
This is getting ridiculous, so much so that in Kansas you also have local governments passing sales taxes to help fund schools because the state is just not doing it. Of course the State Attorney General has those local governments being dragged through the court system in an effort to put an end to that kind of funding.
Personally I have no problem with the sales taxes being passed if that is what it takes to find the money to educate our youth. Apparently the AG is worried that you will find some schools with more money then others, and while that is true, is it a bad thing? Perhaps if the legistlature pulled their heads out of their fourth point of contact such drastic measures would not be needed.
In some of those communities they have actually had to cut off required programs like special ed as there was no money for it. In other areas they have had to lay off teachers to meet the budget demands and that means increased class sizes. It is pathetic.
OPFORSOLDIER:
Thanks for replying. Its a travety is what it is. Education is the key to advancement and when it is sacrificed in the name of budget balancing everyone looses. is it any wonder why outsourcing is so popular these days? Companies can not find competent people to do the jobs in this country any longer.
As I said in my post...we only seem to egg on the clowns to do dumber and dumber things.
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