The First Lady has made child obesity her project just as Lady Bird Johnson championed the Texas Highways in her beautification efforts as the wife of President LBJ. Texas has found a way to implement her plan without even knowing it. Starve the public schools. That's right. Slit the throats of our public schools and the teachers will join the ranks of the unemployed and those they support will certainly reduce the size of the obesity epidemic.
I don't usually highlight Democratic leaning quotes, but this one says exactly what I have been feeling for some time about the state of our Texas government leadership.
"In a place [Texas] where government is already lean, there aren't many areas to make up that kind of cash. [$27-31 billion]. The budget blueprint Texas' Legislature is mulling would mean layoffs for tens of thousands of teachers, closure of community colleges, and a severe reduction in state services for the poor and those with mental health problems." By Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times
This is a quote that says it all for me. IF we are talking about the feds, there is real concern about what they have been spending millions on but that isn't true in Texas! Texas is not a "touchy freely" kind of state. When Grandma ends up living in your back bedroom and you have to lift her out of bed and to the toilet, you might rethink your battle cry of "no new taxes". You might also want to re-think your night time activities as it could be unsafe to go out at night when the prison population is reduced by releasing "non-violent" offenders as part of the State budget deficit. You know, Al Capone was in prison due to tax evasion but it didn't mean he wasn't a bad guy.
This is the kind of thing that will silence loud mouth tea party conservatives over night. Many "independents" can turn their vote on a dime and the State Legislature will be Bright Blue by the time they meet again. Most of our county officials are just RINO's, waiting for a chance to change their party affiliations back to Democrat. The Republicans take away and the Democrats give it back. You know what they say, "You only miss it when its gone". We'll all be saying that by the end of the summer and the politicians leave Austin.
I am a Republican that has voted that way since Ronald Reagan. But, I believe there is a place for indigent care and I believe that the State has a constitutional responsibility to fund education. Certainly to fund education to the extent that they make laws requiring performance at a certain level and tasks beyond their mandate..
Take one of hundreds of examples: State required testing. Texas is changing to an "end of course" testing structure starting with next year's Freshman class, I believe. I sat in a meeting in our local district that gave an overview of the expected cost to implement that system, STARS, I think it is called. It was outrageous how much expense is associated with implementing this new program across all grade levels. There are multiple times for students to test and each testing opportunity costs money-and lots of it.
So, are they going to just suspend testing? Is that what we want? Well, that would eliminate some administrative jobs but how are we going to know if students know what they are supposed to know? Do we really care? The state has made gains in the last few years in the area of student learning, but we still rank well below many other states; 45th in students completing high school and 47th in SAT scores according to a Democrat report on how Texas ranks in various areas of public services. called, "Texas on the Brink". (If the Repubs come out with something that conflicts with this information, I'll use their numbers. I seriously don't think they can find any numbers that will be any better than this, however.)
I had a conversation yesterday with a long time educator, now retired. His main concern was his retirement benefits and of course that is human nature and I'm sure I wouldn't be much different if I were in his shoes. (I'm just a step behind him). His opinion was that we can do without the 22-1 if we just got rid of all the needless requirements put on the schools by the State and the Federal government. He talked about having 35 kids in his class when he was a young teacher. He doesn't think today's teachers could deal with that because they are too soft( my interpretation). He may be right. I countered with my viewpoint that having 35 kids in an elementary classroom wouldn't leave much room for individualized attention and lead to drop outs. He countered back that we still have drop outs, not because of the class room attention they get, but because of the home environment that they are influenced by. That may be true.
Why do we still have dropouts when our system is geared to address every learning disability that a child evidences. Countless dollars are spent insuring that each child is offered instruction in the most meaningful way to them. One child can have one to two FTE's dedicated to their own personal educational effort. How is that equitable? Have we gone too far? Some say that "special education " is a scared word. I say, it should give a child an opportunity but not to the point that resource cost double or triple per child to the cost of a regular student unless completely compensated. We know that isn't going to happen.
Well, I don't have the answer, but I do know, the schools cannot be cut to the extent our state leaders are proposing and still provide the endless array of "services" that they are currently charged with providing.
The running joke used to be when one felt they were being blamed for more then they are responsible for, they would say, "I guess I'm now responsible for ending world hunger". Well, the schools have been told they are now responsible for curing world obesity - by throwing them the bones in the state budget.
Just sayin...
AR
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