Putting off a day of reckoning

by: Eric B.

Fri Dec 11, 2009 at 10:43:41 AM EST

I think it's a safe bet that the school funding cut reprieve will be poorly interpreted in certain corners.  In fact, say it will be so and it will be so.

Ever since she announced a projected $292 per pupil cut months ago, the republicans have criticized her for going around the state to "reve-up support for a tax hike" which Elsenheimer now dismisses as "sky-falling rhetoric" that was somehow not based in reality. He charged her with "playing politics with our school kids."

Skubick goes on to note that the governor deserves the benefit of the doubt on this. True, perhaps, but the real danger with this is that the per pupil cut she announced in October was really just part of a larger narrative.  Education is the thing that really, honestly gets people's emotions going, because it involves their kids and not themselves, but the K-12 cuts were just part of a larger campaign to disinvest in the state of Michigan by one of our political parties.

I may be alone among liberals to think that cutting the Michigan Promise was the least of the cuts that came about as a result of last year's budget. In fact, the only reason we need the Michigan Promise is because the state has whittled away at higher education appropriations over the years, forcing colleges and universities to pick up the slack by hiking tuition. If the state properly invested in higher education, the burden carried by individual students and families could be reduced to the point where eliminating the Michigan Promise might not have quite the impact on individual budgets that it is having.

Alas, there are souls out there who foolishly believe that we invest too much money in education already, and refuse to consider covering costs even in the short term while we reform education that maximizes investment while promoting excellence.  It remains, and is, the fault of educators and administrators and not just hide-bound adherence to ideology over providing quality services.  We are told that we are not allowed to raise revenue -- no matter how many independent studies tell us that our revenue gathering system is antiquated -- because people stubbornly oppose consolidating school districts.  At any rate, consolidating school districts isn't something that could happen overnight. It'd take years to pull it off, and the need for additional money for education is immediate.

As said above, however, this is part of a larger disinvestment in Michigan.  We have education funding problems. It should also be noted that we've seen huge cuts to revenue sharing that local governments use to provide public safety and parks and libraries.  We also had cuts in government health care, cuts that will result in even bigger cuts in federal matching funds and that will wind up costing everyone who uses the hospital more in larger bills ... again, hospitals have to balance their books by the end of the year and if government health care isn't reimbursing them properly, they have to pass those costs on to someone else. And, it's not just federal matching funds in health care we're losing, but also in transportation.  Our roads are in horrible shape, and we're losing federal money that could be used to fix them because there is no appetite to raise the money to do it.

The governor's October K-12 cuts should have served as a general eye opener for all of this.  Polls now show that a majority of people want more money invested in K-12 education, because over the last two months they've been introduced to what those cuts will look like.  And, even if these cuts are spared, it does not negate the fact that everyone capable of seeing more than five feet in front of their faces sees even more massive cuts coming in the next budget.

The unfortunate side effect of this is that the governor's announcement will provide cover to those parties prone to delusion that it's all be a big put-on for the last three months, that somehow school districts will be able to make it through fine and still deliver quality education in a way that is acceptable to everyone.  To those persons, the natural and only acceptable solution appears to be screwing the teachers and breaking unions.