Grading Texas

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

The ultraconservative party platform adopted last weekend by the takenoprisoner delegates to the Texas Republican Convention is predictably full of the profamily, profree enterprise, proguns, redwhiteandblue rhetoric we have come to expect of such documents. And, of course, it is rounded out with a lot of antitax, antigays, antiimmigrants, antiUnited Nations language as well.

It will go unread by at least 99.99 percent of Texans, and, collectively, it represents the viewpoints of a rapidly shrinking minority. The platform writers, nevertheless, must have had a grand ol’ time venting their spleens at the Grand Old Party’s biennial bash.

The 29page document includes four pages of recommendations for public and higher education, which should be required reading for teachers who still may not understand why the political process is important to them or whether they should even bother to vote.

Here are a few lowlights of the rightwing’s wish list:

# Put more restrictions on local property taxes, repeal the state franchise tax and require a twothirds supermajority for the Legislature to pass any tax increase. In other words, cut spending on an already underfunded public education system.

# A teacher pay raise? Forget it. See above.

# Expand the powers of the State Board of Education over curriculum and textbook content and put the education commissioner and the entire Texas Education Agency under its authority. Some conservatives obviously think history needs even more rewriting.

# Give Intelligent Design and other unnamed “political philosophies” equal billing with evolution in science classrooms.

# Provide “teacher incentives through monetary and recognition awards.” This sounds like an unfunded merit pay plan. Maybe they mean an occasional pat on the head.

# Cut back on bilingual education, just as Texas’ Hispanic population is mushrooming. If a kid can’t speak English after three years, too bad.

# Quit teaching multiculturalism, even as Anglos are becoming a minority in Texas’ public schools.

# Encourage “parental school choice…in public, private or parochial education.” Translation: private school vouchers.

# Oppose mandatory preschool and kindergarten and urge Congress to repeal governmentsponsored early childhood development programs.

# Restrict sex education to abstinence only and give parents veto power over that.

# Promote corporal punishment in the schools.

# Abolish the tenure system for university faculty.

# Don’t issue any school bonds unless at least 25 percent of registered voters participate in the election, meaning there wouldn’t be much school construction for the foreseeable future.

Remember the backandforth between Gov. Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Bill White over Texas’ high school dropout rate? White contended it was as high as 30 percent, and Perry countered that it was as low as 10 percent, if you counted young people who took more than four years to complete high school and performed several other statistical gymnastics.

No two interested groups, it seems, count dropouts the same way, but just about every group, except the governor’s office, believes the rate is much higher than 10 percent.

Now, the newspaper, Education Week, has weighed in – not on the governor’s race, but on the dropout rate. It has been tracking dropout rates across the country for years and has just released its most recent calculations – the graduation profile for the class of 2007.

According to Education Week, the graduation rate for Texas that year was 65.1 percent. Some 34.9 percent of the students who began ninth grade four years earlier didn’t cross the finish line, at least on time. The national graduation rate that year was 68.8 percent. Texas tied with Hawaii for 38th, both just behind Alaska.

Over the previous 10 years, the Texas graduation rate had gradually risen from 59.3 percent in 1997.

As they did nationally, the graduation rates for Hispanics and African Americans lagged behind the statewide total. The 2007 graduation rate for Hispanics in Texas was 55.6 percent, virtually identical to their national average of 55.5 percent. The graduation rate for black students in Texas was 55.3 percent, slightly higher than the 53.7 percent for that group nationally.

That means about 45 percent of Hispanic and black students in Texas, almost half, didn’t graduate within four years.

In other findings, the Education Week study, entitled “Diplomas Count,” identified two school districts in Texas – Dallas and Houston ISDs – as among the 25 “dropout epicenters” producing onefifth of all the dropouts in the country.

The study used a “Cumulative Promotion Index” to calculate graduation rates. It measured how many students were promoted during each year of high school.

Nationally, 2007 graduation rates ranged from a high of 83.3 percent in New Jersey to a low of 41.8 percent in Nevada.

The study estimated that 1.3 million students nationwide – including 135,000 in Texas – failed to graduate on time with the class of 2010. That represented a loss of 7,200 students from the U.S. graduation pipeline every school day, including 751 dropouts each school day in Texas.

I think just about everyone with more than a passing interest in this subject, except maybe Gov. Perry, realizes Texas has a serious dropout problem. Now, it is time – past time – for officeholders and candidates to start promoting some realistic, honest solutions. Merely debating the numbers isn’t going to make the problem disappear.

Some Republicans obviously are not as confident of Gov. Rick Perry’s reelection as the governor and some polls seem to be. That is why, of course, a Republican consultant in Arizona (the Border Phobia State) went to the trouble of arranging a petition drive to get the Green Party on the Texas ballot in November.

Remember, Perry was reelected with only 39 percent of the vote in 2006 because his wealth of unpopularity produced a wealth of opponents – one Democrat, two independents and one Libertarian. The more opposition, the merrier for our incumbent governor, because it reduces the number of votes he needs to win another four, long years.

A Green Party gubernatorial candidate, any Green Party gubernatorial candidate, will siphon votes from Democratic nominee Bill White. And, that will be bad news for educators, health care professionals, working class people and anyone else (including environmentalists) who believe that state government has a positive role to play for everyone, not just a privileged few.

According to The Dallas Morning News, which broke the story, it is unclear who actually paid for the Green Party’s ballot petition drive. But it was arranged by an Arizona political consultant and funded through Take Initiative America, a nonprofit corporation in Missouri.

The funding arrangement even may be illegal under Texas law. But the Green Party seems eager to accept the gift and the ballot access, even though the whole arrangement, if successful, will continue to hinder the environmental cause in Texas. Yes, I am one of those people who believe Ralph Nader, the Green Party’s 2000 presidential candidate, helped give the White House – and control of federal environmental regulations – to George W. Bush for eight years.

Political behavior, unfortunately, is not always rational. Nor, obviously, is it always ethical. It would seem that a selfrespecting political party would not willfully let itself be played for a fool. But issues and advocacy aside, the first goal of a political party, even a minor one, is to get votes. And the Green Party can’t get votes in Texas this year if it is not on the ballot.

We can only hope that if the Greens get their candidates on the ballot, they don’t end up shooting themselves – and a lot of other people – in the head.

Let us imagine for a moment that the environmentally friendly Al Gore had won that razorthin presidential race in 2000 and had been in charge of the Department of the Interior for the eight years during which the Bush administration established a lax regulatory climate.

Maybe Interior would have had a tougher regulatory mindset when BP filed for the necessary federal approvals for that drilling site in the Gulf of Mexico. You know the one.

It would be unkind – and maybe unfair – to suggest that the Green Party contributed indirectly to one of the biggest environmental disasters in history, but….

Here is a link to one of the Dallas News’ stories:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/060810dntexballotfolo.1e6ec0a.html