CA: Governor hints school funding may be targeted

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent a jolt through the state's education community Tuesday by suggesting he might propose suspending the constitutional guarantee of minimum school spending to cope with the fiscal crisis.

In an interview on CNN's "Inside Politics," Schwarzenegger said he was negotiating with school groups "to help us with this budget crisis ... to maybe have a suspension or to have some relief there so we can pull out of these next two years and pay it back, maybe."

Why be so wimpy about it? The Education Establishment needs to take a 33% budget cut - right now. This bloated, antiquated, alternative juvenile prison and Socialist-indoctrination system is the reason for all of our budget problems.

As I've suggested before, I would suggest closing all schools in the state for the 2004-2005 school year - give the kids a year off, they aren't going to learn much under this system, anyway - and come back for the 2005-2006 school year with a completely redesigned K-12 and university system. By simply outlining such a plan in a major policy address, Arnold could give heart attacks to a host of villainous characters in Sacramento.

"Stutzman suggested that suspending the guarantee would merely limit the growth in school spending and would not mean that the governor was reneging on his promise not to cut school budgets."

Go Governator ! Limit the growth to zero... and if that dosen't get them to cut out their own fat - Start tossing people and replace them with people who will !

Hear hear!!! Thank you for your comments! I voted against Prop. 96 when it was approved, precisely because a guaranteed level of spending on any program, regardless of how "noble," is a bad idea, and only encourages waste. I wish I had the statistics handy, but when a goodly number of high school students can't read, and can't do math, thanks to the "look-say" method of reading and the "guess-and-check" method of math that is now popular, I say we yank all funding from public education, give every parent $2000 per child to find their own means of educating them, and give the remainder of the schools' money to the construction of roads in California. Through a pure "voucher" system, the liberals can exercise their choice and send their kids to Waldorf schools, or some leftist propaganda mill, while the rest of us can either have the resources to homeschool our kids, or place them in private schools which actually work at teaching students something.

I hope Arnold follows through with putting education under the microscope. It's time to stop treating public education as an unassailable sacred cow, and treat it like the scandal it is.

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