Priorities

The Washington post tells us today that charter schools in D.C. are suffering from the financial crisis as loans and capital altogether are becoming more difficult to get. Why don’t we figure out how to prioritize and spread some of that education money in the bailout bill to charter schools which work with and receive per-pupil funding from state education agencies. That ought to be fair.

It is not certain whether the bailout bill is meant to alleviate the school funding burden for states who must pare down education in next year’s budget or whether it is intended to add to preexisting funding. Of course dispersal is discretionary, yet, some states may not be undertaking large overhauls of school facilities and curriculum—many states may put most of their funding into pay roll and other operations in the next year’s budget. New Jersey has already allocated over $3 billion to schools and there’s little chance of getting that back considering the row from school supporters during its passage—we’ll know for sure on the 16th of this month when Governor Corzine holds his second fiscal crisis meeting. I have been thinking about what he might say and where he might cut. The cuts and proposals of this most recent budget session were hard enough. Is New Jersey ready for what is coming?

Perhaps some of our construction budget can be replaced with federal aid since our Abbott schools seem to qualify under the language of the bill. At least some of our most dejected areas should receive funding. And, of course our districts will demand the funding be added not replaced in the $3 billion. They may need to stand down considering the coming financial storm - for the good of the state. Though it was never absolutely clear whether this latest construction proposal carried with it all the constitutional imperative that its successors did, that certainly will be an issue if Corzine should try to take it back. I hate to say it but $2-3 billion would help considering the revenue loss that some are expecting. The proponents of this latest construction allocation were right when they said that the coming crisis would diminish any further school construction funding possibilities, though they may not have weighed the possibility that the hardtimes would be so severe. In regard to the policy reccomendations from Rutgers which billed the construction as a revenue generator, perhaps a New Jersey labor preference really should be built into the process.

We need to be ready to tighten our belts since such a large amount of New Jersey’s tax revenue will be lost as these finance giants up north go under. Perhaps it’s time to think about ways of improving teaching that have nothing to do with building classrooms. Perhaps there are some excellent educators out there who wouldn’t mind teaching kids who are hard to teach, in classrooms that maybe they wouldn’t park their car in. I have a great New York Times clip from the depression era when, in Newark, teachers who feared losing their jobs were reportedly fainting in classrooms from over exertion. I’m not saying that teachers will be or should be blacking out in the middle of a lesson—I really don’t think it’s possible these days—I mean to say that apart from all the panic mongering going on in the media these days, perhaps teachers will feel some proper sense of emergency and step up as great educators. To know what will happen around here I guess we’ll just have to wait till Thursday.