Democracy in Action

Yikes.

Today (and tomorrow, of course), Shara has no school so teachers can hold parent conferences. In a moment of madness, I thought it would be instructive to bring Shara along to a Wisconsin Senate Committee hearing on reforming the state’s school funding mechanism. It’ll be educational, I told her, and it’s important to get engaged in issues that affect you.

The session was advertised as starting at 10:00, and we got there just at 10:00. But clearly, time runs differently inside the Capitol, and the session was rapped into order at 10:35 or so. The room was packed with advocates for better school funding. Shara looked around and said, I’m the only one under 20 in the room.

Later, a couple of moms arrived with a herd of very young kids. Shara pointed out the huge ziploc bag of Halloween candy with them, and guessed it was to keep the kids quiet. And indeed, during testimony, I glanced over and all the kids had lollipops jammed in their mouths.

The committee, Senate Education Committee, called the hearing to consider and vote on a resolution calling on the full Legislature to convene a bi-partisan group, including education experts, to consider ways to make our current funding system match the actual costs of standards the legislature requires public schools meet. Right now the system operates with a built-in cumulative annual deficit of 2 – 4%. The resolution, SJR 27, simply sets a deadline for that group to develop and implement appropriate changes to the funding system: July 2009.

Seems pretty simple, right?

Oh my god, these people are utterly self-absorbed, grandstanding, tunnel vision egomaniacs! Ok, just the Republicans. Though the Dems on the Committee were less than helpful in moving the whole thing forward.

Every question put to the two lead sponsors of the resolution, Rep. Pope-Roberts and Senator Breske, by the Repubs was some form of: “Are you asking for more money for schools? What about the poor taxpayers?” Here’s a very brief list:

“You live in the Madison school district, where the budget allocates $13,000 per student. My district spends $9000, and noone is complaining about education. Well, ok, some are, there were a lot of votes for the school funding referendum (aside: yeah there were – 38%) So, would this be reallocating money from rich districts to poor ones, or adding more money to school funding overall?”
“We need this to be equitable for the schools, but more so for the taxpayers.”
“I know if we gave each school $2000 more per student, they’d come back complaining they don’t have enough in two years. We can’t just feed the beast without some understanding of how the money is being spent.”
“Wisconsin ranks 8th in the nation on what we spend on schools. We do spend money on schools, we spend a lot.” (aside: Not really high praise, given that nationally, public schools are given short shrift. Saying we spend more than Mississippi isn’t telling us much. There’s a huge gap between “more than Mississippi” and “enough to meet our educational goals.”)

Do they actually believe the idiotic things that come out of their mouths?? If so, then the evidence in the hearing room indicates that we need to spend a lot more on public education, if these morons are products of Wisconsin schools. Poor Sondy Pope-Roberts had to sit so patiently and repeat, over and over, that she was not proposing any specific changes to school funding, simply telling the legislature to do its job and setting a deadline by which that job should be done.

I am so depressed by people like the Repubs on that committee who clearly have no interest in paying for anything, just keeping taxes as low as they can. It was clear when Sondy pointed out that we spend an average of $9000 per student per year, compared to an average of $28,000 per inmate per year, that the obvious connection – if we properly educate our kids, they’ll be less likely to commit crimes, so it makes more sense to invest a smaller amount now rather than pay a larger bill later – sailed right over their glazed-over-eyes heads.

Shara sat through over an hour of this charade, so I took her out to lunch afterwards.

During the hearing, she wrote me a note: “Me gusta ir a la escuela.” Maybe I should have passed it to Sondy, as a written thumbs up.