N.C. lawmakers face tough choices on school spending
By SCOTT MOONEYHAM, Associated Press Writer
May 13, 2002 9:29 am
Posted on 05/13/2002 7:49:37 AM PDT by Constitution Day
N.C. lawmakers face tough choices on school spending
By SCOTT MOONEYHAM, Associated Press Writer
May 13, 2002 9:29 am
RALEIGH, N.C. -- For months, Gov. Mike Easley has been saying he wants to protect the classroom while lawmakers put together a state budget for the next fiscal year.
It's a task that some legislators say will be daunting or even impossible, given that most members of the General Assembly seem unwilling to broach the subject of a broad tax hike for a second straight year.
As Easley prepares his budget proposal, the state faces a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in the current fiscal year. That means the starting point for the next fiscal year will have to be less, and a sluggish economy will force growth in tax collections to be revised lower.
In short, budget architects will have to find well over $1 billion in agency cuts as they craft next year's state spending plan, unless they get some additional revenue from somewhere.
Meanwhile, legislative budget writers are moving ahead with their own budget plans while eagerly awaiting to see how Easley will accomplish his goal of no cuts in the classroom.
The numbers over which they are poring show how overwhelming the task is. Consider this:
-- $8.3 billion of the state's $14.5 billion general fund budget goes toward public school, community college and university education.
-- $5.9 billion of that money goes to the public schools.
-- Without any increases to student-teacher ratios, the state is prepared to spend $2.27 billion on teacher salaries next year. The figure represents 15.6 percent of the state's general fund budget. It does not include pay for central office administrators, principals, teaching assistants, clerks or janitors.
-- The state pays out $347 million to 28,000 teaching assistants, making their pay a leading item in the public school budget. But cutting any of those positions would also amount to a "cut in the classroom."
"It's very difficult," said Sen. Walter Dalton, co-chair of the Senate subcommittee that oversee education spending. "Over 90 percent of the education budget is personnel. It's not all teachers, but even outside the classroom it's people who make the schools go."
Because personnel is so much a part of the picture, legislators have little to gain by trimming other items in the schools' budget. For example, a proposal to cut textbook outlays by 10 percent would save just $7 million. Another to cut other classroom supplies by 10 percent saves just $6.6 million.
That barely gets the bucket damp when you are searching for $695 million in cuts, as education budget writers have been instructed to do.
On the other hand, increasing class size by one student in all grades would eliminate 2,651 positions and save $119 million.
That kind of cut is not something any legislator would relish. And it would take place even as Easley talks about lowering class sizes in elementary grades.
Just last year, at Easley's urging, lawmakers spent $12 million lowering class size in kindergarten. This year, they are scheduled to spend $26 million.
But increasing class size and eliminating teaching positions is an option legislators are discussing.
They are also looking at cutting out teaching assistants except in kindergarten through second grade, eliminating roughly 4,000 jobs and saving $80 million.
Other proposals call for eliminating the jobs of 1,146 vocational education instructors, saving $56 million, and cutting the positions of jobs of out 1,590 custodian and clerical workers, saving $38.7 million.
"I don't think anything is off the table. We have a budget situation that's got to be addressed. We can't run up deficits," Dalton said.
But after years of education reforms and boosting teacher salaries, there is little doubt that teaching cuts will be the last item on legislators' list.
Still, squeezing schools -- through other personnel -- won't be so far down.
URL for this article: http://www.heraldsun.com/state/6-226622.html
© Copyright 2002. All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is copyrighted by The Durham Herald Company and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site's Terms of Use.
In other words, let's not annoy the powerful teachers' lobby that got us elected!
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It's not.
Preserving the present cadre of teachers & assistants is.
Mentioning "private schools" or - God forbid! - "homeschooling" to a member of the education bureacracy is like garlic to a vampire.
Math you gota love it.
Legislators are already throwing in the towel on budgetary matters, as evidenced by the posted article.
The amount of waste in the system, no documented in the article, is immense. But I'll only bring to light one point that is never covered by the media: special ed teachers.
Because of an overwhelmingly democratic house/senate/governors, and the total lack of leadership from the rare RHINO governor, the laws surrounding educational spending in this state are truly insane.
A child, no matter how disabled, even if they have no meaningful contact with the outside world above a vegetative state, is required to have a place in public school. No one mentions it, and teachers are threatened with firing if they talk about it or photograph these 'students'. When people throw these 'class size' figures around, they are talking about averages, not the genuine median class size. There is one special 'teacher' for every two or three of these kids. This insanity is legally mandated!
What I haven't detailed would fill a book: The gutting of the charter school system, school principals holding down two or three positions in order to draw six-figure salaries, the immensely bloated salaries of the education hierarchy (i.e. everything above the pricipal level), the nineteenth century purchasing system, the bizarre mandates against local communities voluntarily spending more to improve the quality of schools, the push to allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition, the million dollar excursions on the taxpayers money for 'conferences' to the bahamas or disneyworld, etc.
Forget 9/11. We should find whoever is responsible for this madness and bomb them!
Isn't the deposition part of the evidence?
Hey I take offense to that. New York politicians are alot more expensive than the goobers ruining this state.
BTW- Leave the gun, take the cannolis!
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