Grading Texas

Anyone who may have thought we were nearing the end of school district cutbacks, think again. The Austin ISD, for one, already is moving forward with plans to deal with more budget reductions next year, and those plans include the possible closure of neighborhood schools.

An AISD task force recommended closing nine schools last spring, but that proposal sparked an uproar from parents and other members of the community and was shelved in favor of other budgetcutting steps. Now, school closures are being revived as an option as district officials prepare to wrestle with a projected loss of an additional $24.6 million in state funding in 201213 plus a loss of $13.8 million in federal education job stimulus funds.

AISD parents supposedly were notified of that possibility the other day in an email from Superintendent Meria Carstarphen. I say “supposedly” because the message was written in some of the worst bureaucratic gobbledygook that I have read in a long time. The use of such phrases as “Administrative Recommendation for a Facility Master Plan” and “longrange planning tool” and “Annual Facilities Recommendations” most likely moved the great majority of AISD parents directly to the “delete” button. And, that may have been by design.

Nowhere did the wordy message come to the point and acknowledge that school closures were once again under consideration.

School districts still are in a budgetary bind. And, as I have said repeatedly, that is primarily the fault of Gov. Rick Perry and the legislative majority, who slashed $5.4 billion from the state public education budget over the next two years while leaving $6.5 billion unspent in the Rainy Day Fund.

But many superintendents and school board members share part of the blame because, unlike TSTA and other teacher groups, they gave up on the legislative funding fight last spring way too early. Instead of demanding that their elected representatives tell the governor and the antigovernment tea party types to take a hike, they concentrated their lobbying on legislation to make it easier for school districts to dismiss teachers, cut their pay and otherwise transfer more of the cost of budgetary reductions to the classroom.

Carstarphen ends her mostly incomprehensible message by promising to “continue to keep everyone informed through future communications.”

AISD parents had better hire some interpreters.

Meanwhile, other districts also may start considering school closures for 201213.

Rarely, very rarely, has Rick Perry done something right as governor, and predictably a couple of those rare occasions got him in trouble last night from the tea partiers whose support he now spends most of his time courting.

The biggest bashings that Perry took from the right wing during the Republican candidates’ debate in Tampa were over his 2007 executive order to require school girls to be vaccinated against HPV, a virus causing cervical cancer, and his signing several years ago of a law allowing some children of illegal immigrants to qualify for lower, instate tuition at statesupported universities.

The assaults were led by Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, two candidates slipping into oblivion but trying desperately to keep finger holds on the rightwing fringe of the GOP presidential follies.

I didn’t think the HPV vaccine was a bad idea from a public health standpoint, although I strongly believed then and now that the executive order exceeded Perry’s constitutional authority. And, I was troubled that the order reeked of insider influence, as Perry’s opponents reminded everyone last night. The governor’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, lobbied for Merck, the vaccine manufacturer, and Merck also was a Perry political contributor. In any event, the Legislature, led by Republicans, quickly overturned the order.

The law, still on the books, giving a tuition break to immigrant children was a good idea then and is still a good idea, although it obviously continues to anger rightwing ideologues who wrongly try to blame immigrants for the state’s problems and refuse to accept the changing face of Texas. Only immigrant young people who have been in the country a while, have graduated from high school in Texas and meet university admissions requirements get the break. The idea is to enhance their chances of becoming productive members of Texas’ emerging future.

Now, I don’t know if Perry signed the law because he thought it was good policy or because he was urged to do so by political contributors whose businesses depend on a continued flow of inexpensive immigrant labor, legal or illegal, and are more interested in the health of their bottom line than in ideological jabbering.

I often suspect the latter because Perry has pretty much slammed the door on immigrants – and the descendants of immigrants – ever since.

This year, he advocated for and signed a photo identification law that will discriminate against minority voters. And his persistent underfunding of education diminishes the educational prospects of all Texas young people, especially disadvantaged kids trying to get ahead. Many of those are immigrants or their descendants.

That underfunding hit a new low this year, when Perry signed the worst public education budget in his 61year lifetime, an appropriations bill slashing $5.4 billion from the public schools and depriving thousands of deserving students of college financial aid. While educators and students struggle with the results, the governor brags and the tea party usually applauds. But not last night in Tampa.

President Obama’s jobs proposal would pay for as many as 39,500 educator and first responder jobs in Texas and provide additional funding for school renovation and community college modernization, which would create thousands of additional jobs, according to an analysis distributed to Congress.

The potential numbers clearly dispute the political blahblah issued by presidential wannabe Rick Perry after the president’s speech.

“This proposal offers little hope for millions of Americans who have lost jobs on his (Obama’s) watch and taxpayers who are rightly concerned that their children will inherit a mountain of debt,” Perry said.

Perry, as we in Texas already know, is killing education jobs – thousands of them – with a new state budget that slashes education funding. Obama, meanwhile, is proposing the creation of thousands of jobs for educators and other working Texans. Here are some details, according to information given to Congress:

# More than $2.5 billion to Texas to support as many as 39,500 educator and first responder jobs.

# More than $2.3 billion to Texas for improving classrooms and upgrading public schools. This funding would support as many as 30,300 additional jobs.

# More than $458 million in funding to modernize community colleges in Texas.

# Other steps to create thousands of additional infrastructure jobs and help 329,000 longterm unemployed workers, including teachers, in Texas get back to work.

# Tax cuts for millions of working Texans, including teachers, who are fortunate enough to have jobs.

What about that “mountain of debt” that Perry says that Texans are worried about their children inheriting?

Most unemployed and underemployed Texans are more worried about the mountains of personal debt they and their families are accumulating while political naysayers continue to play rhetorical games, both in Congress and on the GOP presidential trail.

As anticipated, the needs of public schools and teachers were a very low priority for Gov. Rick Perry and other Republican presidential candidates during last night’s debate. One of the few times that any participant discussed education was when Perry was forced to defend the ax that he and the legislative majority took to Texas’ public schools this year. And, his defense was weak.

He claimed the $5.4 billion in public education cuts were “thoughtful reductions.” They were about as “thoughtful” as a bunch of college boys chasing a greased pig through a fraternity party. The only thought going through Perry’s mind during the budgetcutting exercise was how well it would play politically with antigovernment ideologues.

The Education Week blog linked below refers to $4 billion in education cuts in Texas. The total cuts were actually $5.4 billion in the next twoyear budget. That includes $4 billion slashed from funding obligations to districts plus $1.4 billion cut from public education grants.

Perry, who once again bragged about job creation in Texas, simply ignored the thousands of teachers and other school employees who have lost (or will lose) jobs as a result of his slashing public school funding. TSTA doesn’t have a firm number yet, but some respected analysts predict 49,000 school jobs will be lost by the time the second half of the budget kicks in next year.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaignk12/2011/09/perry_defends_ed_record_gingri.html?cmp=ENLEUNEWS2