Meghan Murphy: Education cash crunch signals need for reform
Everyone last week seemed to be running around scraping together money to save education jobs. While they scramble, I have to ask: Is pouring money at the same old broken system a solution?
Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that included $10 billion for education jobs. To pay for the fund, Congress robbed three stimulus reform initiatives.
During the past few months, local educators have said we need to keep teachers in the classroom. But they've also said we need reforms, such as those outlined in President Barack Obama's Race to the Top program.
Obama wants both, too. But what the House is saying is that we have to prioritize. So what do we choose — today or tomorrow?
The initial education stimulus money plugged a hole in New York's fiscal dam for almost two years. Albany supplanted state school aid with federal money and did little to address the rising tide of education costs.
Education spending in our state soared between 2003 and 2009. On Sunday, you read that more people are leaving our region than are arriving. So too have enrollments shrunk in 70 percent of mid-Hudson districts. Yet, school spending per pupil in the 24 districts where enrollment fell increased anywhere from 38 to 81 percent during the 2003-2009 period.
Though we might not like the way it happened, fiscal crisis forced substantial change in school budgets. In January, with little federal stimulus money left, Gov. David Paterson proposed cuts in state school aid. The cuts shifted some costs to taxpayers and the decision-making burden to school boards. But the end result was that districts kept spending down. On average, mid-Hudson budgets increased only about 0.4 percent for the upcoming school year.
