JAMAICA — When it comes to protecting our democracy, what could be more important than educated citizen voters? Can our country's way of life survive without an informed and engaged electorate?
To this end, we created public schools.
Sadly, our nonpartisan neglect of public education has produced many voters who think the Supreme Court and Congress “work for” the president. With tribal cable TV news, unfiltered social media, and alternative facts the stakes are high.
And there is a disturbing trend toward the evisceration of public education in America. Federal, state, and sometimes local government would rather hand out taxpayer funded vouchers than Make Public Education Great Again. This often drains public schools of funding and their brightest students, pressuring them into a downward spiral of curricular and extracurricular cuts.
Unregulated private schools also play by different rules. They do not accept every child, while public schools must. Thus, public schools bear the higher costs of special-needs children, and they often feed children who would otherwise go hungry - sometimes daily breakfast, lunch, and a snack.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos supports the funding of for-profit private schools and independent charter schools over public schools, and has said she would eliminate the department she heads.
In Vermont, Governor Phil Scott publicly lauds a for-profit independent school as the shining example of education in this state, and he seeks wherever possible to lower taxes at the expense of public education.
This month, the Vermont Legislature passed tax and budget bills that raise school property-tax rates. Pandering to voters who would lower taxes at any cost, Scott plans to use $58 million of one-time general-fund surplus money to temporarily buy down tax rates. To pay back this money he would enact education “policy” changes to save $300 million and keep rates level for five years, according to VTDigger [“Zero property tax rate increase for Vermont households floated,” May 25.]
Scott's savings are from “reforms” to special education, a statewide teacher health-care plan, and the acceleration of school consolidation and penalties. Example: If your community wants a marching band or something that puts it above a state “threshold,” it will be penalized. And though Scott's five-year plan boasts investments of “millions into early child care, higher education and technical learning,” there is no mention of basic K-12 education - the lifeblood of a democratic society.
The state's Joint Fiscal Office analysts have twice told lawmakers they can't figure out how the administration has arrived at the savings targets, according to VTDigger. The truth is, this effort to keep tax rates (artificially) low is a smokescreen to further cut public education funding with total disregard of the costs to our democracy.