Grading Texas

As a longtime acquaintance and professional observer of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, I believe I can accurately say that he is a strong supporter of integrated schools. But some nonTexans who may have read his remarks about Thurgood Marshall yesterday may have doubts. During the opening session of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, Cornyn called the legendary, former Supreme Court justice a “judicial activist” who had a “judicial philosophy that concerns me.”

Some of Cornyn’s Republican colleagues on the panel made similar statements in an effort to suggest that Kagan, who long ago clerked for Marshall, also may become a liberal “activist” on the high court.

Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice, operates in a different political world than Marshall did. But it is time for him and other conservatives to leave Marshall alone.

For one thing, Marshall has been dead for a number of years. But more importantly, his place in history is secured by two giant contributions. He was the first African American to serve on the nation’s highest court, and, as an attorney, he successfully argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit that resulted in the integration of the nation’s schools.

He is a huge, positive role model for young people, not a punching bag for political ideologues whose own names soon will be forgotten.

Even the State Board of Education recently voted to keep Marshall in Texas’ curriculum standards, despite the recommendations of two “expertsintheirownminds” reviewers that his name be dropped.

Here is a link to a Washington Post column by Dana Milbank suggesting that Marshall, preposterous as it may seem, couldn’t win Senate confirmation today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2010/06/28/AR2010062805129.html?hpid=topnews

Although there is a lot of material swirling about – including Rep. Linda HarperBrown’s transportation problem and Rep. Leo “Arizona” Berman’s filing to run for speaker – I will not be blogging much, if at all, this week.

I am in Nashville, attending the State Education Editors annual conference, a National Education Association event. You know, lectures, power points, continuing education stuff.

I expect to be informed, but I hope there won’t be an endofcourse exam.

After posting the item the other day listing some of the ways in which the recently adopted Texas Republican Party platform would cripple public education, I received a comment from a reader challenging me to be “fair” and also post the “ultraliberal” Democratic education proposals.

Well, I was planning to post portions of the Democratic platform but was going to wait until after the party had actually adopted one for the current election year. That won’t happen until the Democrats hold their state convention at the end of next week. In the meantime, though, I will list some key parts of the Democrats’ 2008 education platform. The 2010 platform likely will be very similar because Democrats for years have been strong supporters of the public schools.

Here are some traditional Democratic education goals likely to remain in the party’s new platform:

# An equitable school finance system that is sufficiently funded by the state so that every district can offer a strong program.

# The state should improve its education funding so that local taxpayers get relief from the socalled “Robin Hood” law that takes local tax dollars from local schools. (The Republican platform advocates a reduction in state funding, which would increase Robin Hood’s raids on local taxpayers.)

# Raise teacher and support staff pay.

# Don’t spend precious tax dollars on private school vouchers, a longtime Republican priority.

# Make dropout prevention and recovery a priority for each school district. (Unless I missed it, the new Republican platform doesn’t say a word about dropouts, one of the biggest economic and social problems facing Texas today.)

# Stop extremists from controlling or censoring curriculum and textbooks. (The Republican platform wants to give the outofcontrol State Board of Education more authority over curriculum and textbooks and oversight of the entire Texas Education Agency.)

# Enforce and extend class size limits, an effective contributor to learning that some Republican legislators will try to weaken next year.

# Protect bilingual education, which the Republican platform wants to weaken, despite continued growth of Hispanic enrollment in the public schools.

# Provide universal access to prekindergarten and kindergarten. (The Republican Party opposes mandatory preschool and kindergarten.)

# Provide early intervention programs to help every child read at or above grade level.

There are other planks, but you can see the major differences between the two parties. Not everyone is going to agree with every Democratic plank. But I think most Texans who value the public schools and honestly want to improve them recognize the Democratic goals as largely mainstream. Only people who are isolated so far to the political right that they are light years removed from the middle would consider them “ultraliberal.” Either that or they have a very limited political vocabulary.

Emperor Nero supposedly fiddled while Rome burned. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I’ve always heard that story.

These days, there are a lot of fires to put out in Texas, and one is raging in El Paso, where voters yesterday rejected a property tax increase sought by the El Paso ISD. Without the extra tax money, the El Paso district says it now will have to start slashing $18 million from essential education programs, increase class sizes and may have to lay off some teachers, because it, like other districts throughout Texas, are underfunded by Gov. Rick Perry and his Republican buddies in the Legislature.

And, where is Emperor Rick? He’s in China, fiddling around on an “economic mission” that will end up costing Texas taxpayers, including his El Paso constituents, a tidy sum of money. More about that a little later.

Taxpayers in El Paso obviously are angry and didn’t want to raise taxes on themselves during the midst of a recession. The longer it takes for state government to address the basic school finance problem, the more difficult it may become for other school districts – those that haven’t already reached their taxing limits to win local tax elections as well.

Without sufficient funding from the state, even to keep up with inflation, school districts have to cut programs or keep trying to raise local taxes. When legislators cut maintenance and operating tax rates by about onethird in 2006, they also set a cap on future tax increases. They allowed districts to raise their rates by 4 cents per $100 valuation without voter approval and – with voter approval – by another 13 cents.

El Paso ISD, which has less to spend per student than the state average under the inequitable school finance system, already had imposed the 4cent increase. In hindsight, you can question the wisdom of asking for the remaining 13 cents all at once or even question the administration’s relationship with its stakeholders. But the school board and administration aren’t the basic problem. The basic problem is Gov. Perry’s and state government’s neglect of public education.

Now, returning to Perry in China, the governor’s expenses are being covered by TexasOne, an economic development initiative funded by private, mostly corporate donors. That arrangement in itself is rife with potential conflictofinterest problems, something that never has seemed to bother the governor.

But the trip also has budgetary implications, and that makes it hypocritical for the governor, who has been directing everyone else in state government to cut spending in the face of a huge revenue shortfall. The budgetary problem revolves around the governor’s taxpayerpaid security detail, which accompanies him everywhere he goes.

The governor’s office and the Department of Public Safety make it as difficult as possible for anyone to get at the cost, but several news reports in recent months have revealed that the bodyguards run up big tabs, partly because of overtime and partly because they stay at the same hotels as the governor. Perry, after all, doesn’t check into EconoLodges.

Last summer, four security officers spent more than $70,000 – yes, $70,000 – accompanying the governor and his party on a fiveday trip to Israel, where Perry could accept a “Defender of Jerusalem” award, while hobnobbing with energy executives. Last October, Perry went to Las Vegas for one night to attend a bachelor dinner party for his son and meet with a Nevada Republican gubernatorial candidate. Political or personal funds again paid for the governor’s own expenses (which they usually do), but taxpayers picked up the security tab $12,321.

If security for one night in Las Vegas cost that much, how much will several days in China cost? A school district in El Paso could use part of that cash.

Here is a link to a story about El Paso ISD’s plight:

http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_15304213