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To
understand education budget, start with math Sunday, May 15, 2005 - The
multimillion-dollar campaign paid by starving teachers unions has finally placed
our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate. Across California, children are
bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's
scorched-earth budget is approved -- a budget that slashes Proposition 98
public-school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7
billion next year. That should be proof enough that our
math programs are suffering. As a public-school parent, I have
given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help
weather these dark days. Maybe -- as a temporary measure only
-- we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a
radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate
measures. The governor proposed spending
$10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the
classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats,
consultants, advisers and specialists onto the streets with no means of support
or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should
allow. So I will begin by excluding from
this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well
as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition
programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an
additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000 per year with the proviso that
they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences. This leaves a mere $6,937 per
student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to
the classroom. To illustrate how we might scrape by
at this subsistence level, let's use a hypothetical school of 180 students with
only $1.2 million to get through the year. We have all seen the pictures of
filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our
children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by
leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square
feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual
lease will cost $158,400. This will provide executive
washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting,
utilities and music in the elevators. We'll also need new desks to preserve the
professional ambience. Next, we'll need to hire five
teachers, but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors
from the Since our conventional gym classes
haven't stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an
annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. Finally, we'll
hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because, well, I don't
know exactly why, but we always have. Our bare-bones budget comes to this: TOTAL -- $1,031,877L The school I have just described is
the school we're paying for. Maybe it's time to ask why it's not the school
we're getting. Other, wiser, governors have made the
prudent decision not to ask such embarrassing questions of the
education-industrial complex because it makes them very angry. Apparently the
unions believe that with enough of a beating, Gov. Schwarzenegger will see
things the same way. Perhaps. But there's an old saying
that you can't fill a broken bucket by pouring more water into it. Maybe it's
time to fix the bucket. Tom
McClintock represents the 19th District in the |
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