Posted on 02/18/2010 5:38:47 AM PST by La Lydia
RICHMOND -- Gov. Bob McDonnell went public Wednesday with his recommendations for $2.1 billion in spending cuts...His suggestions include nearly $730 million in reductions to K-12 education, freezing enrollment in a health insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women, and requiring state workers to take as many as 10 unpaid days off and contribute more toward their pensions...
"There's no doubt in my mind it will cause hardship for real Virginians," McDonnell said. But he maintained his campaign pledge not to raise any taxes.
Reaction came quick from legislators, who now must craft a budget plan...
Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax County, said the governor's proposal to eliminate funding for a school breakfast program for low-income children was "the most tragic."...
McDonnell defended his decision to protect $1.9 billion in car tax relief payments over the next two years while cutting school funding and other services.
"From my study of economics, I don't think that levying additional significant taxes in a recession is the best course of action to recover from that economy and to create more prosperity in the long term," McDonnell said. ...
Of the $730 million in proposed cuts to local schools, the largest bite comes from resetting the funding base to that used in fiscal year 2006, a two-year reduction totaling $225 million. Other cuts to education include $130 million from removing state salary supplements for sports coaches and department heads, nearly $92 million from eliminating initiatives such as Mentor Teacher and school breakfast programs and nearly $20 million in savings from extending the work lives of school buses...
(Excerpt) Read more at roanoke.com ...
The pressholes will crucify him, give it time. Everybody wants “fiscal responsibility” until it comes around to their favorite hand out.
Let me get this straight: A Senator from Fairfax is bee-yotching about the schools no longer providing free breakfasts. In Fairfax, probably the wealthiest county in the Commonwealth.
Turn the screws, Governor. HARD.
Provided that agency and school budgets are not increased, agency and school administrators will immediately be required to make a substantial current-year contribution to the employee retirement fund. Obviously this action will reduce the amount available to support programs.
Note that one of the major problems with so many state and municipal employee retirement programs has been the failure to fund them. As long as state legislators, city councils, and school boards didn't need to fund the retirement plans they could simply write up ever bigger and more grandiose benefit schemes for the employees. The federal government's FERS plan doesn't allow that.
Now is a good time to make this major change.
The pressholes are already crucifying him, although not as bad as I thought they would, but so far he is holding steady and has allies in the House of Delegates. I am listening to a radio news program and teachers are calling in to say “right on,” while people from Maryland are calling to say Maryland should be doing this too. Virginia schools are top-heavy with administrators and “support personnel.” I am sure the teachers union is gearing up for McDonnell’s drawing and quartering. They desperately need to be slapped down.
I think Fairfax is probably one of the wealthiest counties in the entire country.
Any county whose citizens want to keep funding the programs McDonnell has cut can do so, simply by raising their property tax rates.
Any citizens who want more money for education can make it happen, by playing the lottery (all lottery money goes to education).
And any group who is upset about kids starving for lack of breakfast can set up a charity program to provide breakfasts for children.
McDonnell cut parts of the state budget that were least associated with the legitimate state functions. It does seem harsh, but this just puts our spending back to where it was a few of years ago, when Warner/Kaine were taking all the surplus taxes and pouring it into jobs for public service workers who are majority democrats.
Maybe now counties won’t spend 37 million dollars on a school administration building, or pay school administrators hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe we won’t have so many school counselors.
In my county, we are likely to lose specialty school buses, we’ll be paying for college-level tests, and parking fees will increase. Kids will have to pay to participate in after-school sports.
Unfortunately, we will probably lose some language classes, even though they could offer the same classes by using the expensive computer network they have put in all the schools to offer multi-school language courses taught by a single teacher.
We already lost some special classes last year in some schools because there weren’t enough teachers to offer the class multiple times — I don’t know why they don’t offer the remote classroom option, and have the teacher go from school to school so every class gets a real teacher once a week. They could hire teacher’s assistants for the other classes, or maybe save a few administrator jobs by having them do their paperwork in these classrooms to monitor the students.
This will be hardship for my family, driving two kids to school because of the bus situation. And frankly, if they offered us the choice of paying a fee for a bus, I’d pay it, but it would be my choice, and I don’t see why other virginians should have to pay higher taxes to send my kids to alternate schools.
Show the voters the list of electives offered at the high schools and point out the need to focus on the basics, essential to building strong, self-sufficient graduates.
The critics don't realize that if we get our economy going again, these cuts can be reversed when new tax dollars roll in. If we just raised taxes, we'd stunt growth and make things worse.
If people want higher taxes and more government services, they can always try Maryland. Although they are broke too.
You are going to love this: Fairfax County School Planetariums:
Fairfax County is home to nine public school planetariums, the second highest concentration of public planetariums in the nation. Click here to see a map of our planetariums.
But no, there's no waste in our schools.
What a novel concept! A HS diploma actually being WORTH something! Think that might bring more jobs here? I do.
When I was in high school, we took a bus once a week to the one school that had a computer lab, and we learned about stars by going out at night and looking at them.
I volunteer to email your link to the Governor.
Wow. First Gov. Christie, NJ, now Gov. McConnell from VA? Now this is real change, and about time.
My county only has one planetarium. I feel so deprived. /sarc
I’m sure he knows. Look, my county has a lot of specialty programs, and my kids are both in these programs, and the programs are under a lot of pressure. Even before this round of cuts, there have been classes that are on “menu” that haven’t been offered the last 3 years.
In the end, I’ll probably spend as much on my kids for education as I would have if they had raised the taxes. I’ll have to pay for my daughter’s ACT testing, and maybe SAT testing. I’ll have to spend my time driving her and my son to school, instead of to a closer bus stop (If my daughter learned to drive and drove them, I’d have to pay more for her to park the car, and get another car, and pay all that money for insurance).
But that’s fine — why should everybody else have to pay higher taxes for my kids to get special treatment? I do hope they can keep offering a full range of educational opportunities for kids who have already completed the standard courses, because there’s little an individual parent can do to offer high school classes to kids — but wherever I can take care of my own kids, that’s the way it should be.
For those who don’t know, Virginia uses a 2-year budget, so the $730 million is a reduction over two years.
Maybe he’s also thinking about the schools in the poor parts of the state, especially those that have been hit the hardest by the economy?
i recently looked into this and it IS number one in wealth in the nation. DC area has 10 out of the top 20 counties.
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