Public school funding

By J. Dyer

Public school unions want more of our money even though the quality of the education we get is questionable at best.

Union leaders want raises and more benefits. They even attack their own administrators using envy as a tactic to try to get some of the administrators’ money into their own pockets. It is pathetic that we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated into fighting each other for the scraps that our corrupt politicians drop off the governmental feasting table.

Government workers take our money, act like it’s their own, spend it in ways we never intended to allow them to spend it, and then turn us against each other when they say they need more of our money to fulfill the promises they never meant to keep in the first place.

A few months ago we disputed on these pages whether or not we should have to pay more for government schools. Some of the November 2012 propositions for increased school funding passed, but now the government says not all the money from the school propositions will go to the schools.

They lied to us about how these funds would be used. As a result, the public school unions are coming at us, again, for more money because the money we supposedly gave them last election is being diverted down some other government rat hole.

This is not a new lie. Years ago, we were told that the state lottery, which opened the door to legalized gambling in California, would solve the government school funding issue once and for all. Voters were told that the lottery money would fund public education and lessen the general tax burden on citizens. It didn’t do either of those things.

Government school employees and their unions should direct their complaints and hostility about their supposed lack of funding to the government employees who are not giving them the money already allocated to them by the numerous state propositions that were passed to solve their funding problem. They should stop burdening their friends and neighbors for more money to make up for the corruption in the government school system.

Union leaders and government school officials want to have a town hall meeting. Instead of focusing on more funding for their failing system, they should consider discussing solutions to their core problems: government overspending, less than stellar performance records, and public distrust.

Here are some suggested discussion topics: 1) identify the government officials who are withholding money already allocated to your schools and go after them, 2) agree to stop hinting at a teacher’s strike—it blows to pieces your claim that “it’s all about the children,” 3) give us reasons to trust you—show us how your programs are producing good American citizens with a healthy distrust for big government and a respect for American sovereignty, 4) show us you have more concern for student performance in reading, writing, and mathematics than you do for the politically correct “self-esteem” and new morality programs forced on you by the same government that has been cheating you out of your funding, 5) be honest with us in your salary comparisons—include all your benefits and all your time off in your comparison figures, and 6) show us how your system of education is more efficient, more effective, and less costly than the non-government school options available to us.

I doubt if these types of issues will be discussed at a town hall meeting. Most of the answers are not favorable to the government school establishment. But the good people in the system need to ask similar questions to those in their profession who have supported the changes that have morally, educationally, and financially bankrupted their organization.

I might be able to get behind a few of those good people, but I will never support those who support the current arrangement and ask for more of the same.