It's About the Children ...

whether they exist or not

by Geoffrey Norman

Like most political debates these days, the one about spending for K-12 education in Vermont inevitably degenerates into name-calling, sound-biting, and appeals to the cheapest of all emotions – sentimentality.

"It's about the children."

If you believe that Vermont spends lavishly, profligately, and unwisely on schools, sooner or later someone will tell you that this is because you don't "care about the kids."  You are, you see, a black-hearted bastard who wants to keep all your money (which you probably acquired doing mischief on Wall Street) while the children – who are, after all, the future – spend their days in unheated buildings in overcrowded classrooms, being instructed by teachers who are getting by on welfare and food stamps.

Well, one wonders, must you support taxation to educate kids who don't actually ... well, exist, in order to establish your bona fides as one who "cares about the kids?"  Is it necessary to pay to educate phantoms before you can be certified as someone with feelings? 

That we are assessed money to pay for non-existent kids is established, conclusively, by Hugh Kemper in his latest adventure spelunking down the fathomless cave of Vermont's education funding system.  Though to call it a "system" is to assign it vastly more order than it deserves.  It is a labyrinth.  A hall of mirrors.  Anything but a system.  Act 60/68 is no more understandable to the average citizen/taxpayer than the disclaimer at the bottom of that Microsoft program you are trying to install on your computer.  And it was designed to be that way.

If we had a rational, orderly "system” for funding education, it would not take someone with Hugh Kemper's brains, training, and perseverance to cope with it, understand it, and explain it to the rest of us. The point of constructs and contraptions like "equalized pupils" and "circuit breakers" is to dismay and discourage citizens who would like to understand where their money goes while, at the same time, it empowers educrats who want that money in larger and larger amounts even as their work load (number of students to educate) gets smaller and smaller.

We, at Vermont Tiger, challenge you: read Hugh's post and tell us if you think this is, in any sense, a rational way to run an enterprise that consumes more than half of all Vermont's state and local tax revenues. 

One reads Kemper's unemotional, clinical prose and the blood begins to warm and, then, to boil.  As their incomes decline, taxpayers are squeezed more and more to pay for the education of students who don't exist.

 Donnez moi une break, s'il vous plaît.

Not caring enough about "the children" may, under some circumstances, qualify you as someone with a stone heart.  Taxing yourself to educate kids who don't exist certifies your status as a fool ... one who is played by the Vermont NEA.

Back when General Motors was in its slow, irreversible death spiral, there were stories in the papers about something in Detroit called the "jobs bank." This was where GM workers who couldn't be laid off or fired spent their days reading newspapers, doing crosswords, or just staring at the wall while collecting a paycheck.  A company that was losing millions every day and heading for ruin, was paying salaries to people for not working.  It seemed like madness.

And it was.  As is, plainly, paying to educate kids who don't exist.

The debate over school spending isn't, fundamentally, about "the children."  It is about Vermont.  Parents, children ... all of us.

Do we want to go broke "caring about the children" or do we want to shed the kind of larcenous, dishonest tax-and-spend contraptions that Hugh Kemper so ably describes and exposes and, with some luck, leave our children a solvent state where they can work and live and, one day, educate their own children? 

(Children who, by the way, might actually exist and, therefore, need educating.)

Comments

[Daniel Foty]

Hmm.

Non-existent children, non-existent stimulus-created jobs (using non-existent money and created in non-existent Congressional districts), non-existent "green energy" production, non-existent "global warming"....

Notice a theme in there?

[Matt]

First, Hugh's efforts have given fuel for a handful of us here in Georgia, VT to push back in the budget process - and the reality is you can start far from the kids and classrooms (i.e. the supervisory unions) and make significant cost savings without an impact on the educational product.

And I've read the latest post several times - even sent it to my schoolboard members...but I can't quite understand it. Is there a way to ask Hugh some questions? It's not his fault, this subject is so dense that you have to suspend logic to get your head around it.

[GEN X Vermonter]

It all points to the fact that we as Americans really don't have legitimate things to worry about anymore. Heck 3 to 4 generations ago we were worried that Nazis were going to take over the world. Before that it was legitimate diseases like small pox and polio. We have all our needs taken care of. We don't have to hunt our food, grow our produce, or defend our homes from barbarians. This is the definition of complacency. We as Americans begin to make stuff up to be worried about.

[Retta Dunlap]

Delightful article Geoffrey!! Thank you for the perspective. If you do not mind I think I will use some of this in my conversations with the powers that be....

The "system" or labyrinth must be reorganized. There are too many layers to deal with.

Isn't that what businesses do when they get in trouble? Or they used to do before bail outs? They reorganize, streamline, and prioritize to become more effective and efficient at what they do.

When we do not do this, it is NOT about the children, real or otherwise.

We used to do more with less. Now we are spoiled and we do less with more. As if money makes up the difference...

[Jerry Coleman]

Pt 1: Act 60/68 was designed to be so complicated that no one understood it-therefore just go with it.
Pt 2 The early ed program was started because alot of parents don't want to be parents-they expect teachers to do it so they can do their own thing.
Pt3: It's become very apparent because we've lost so many manufacturing jobs that the Labor Unions expect Obama to put them back in business via health care protection and more government jobs.
Pt 4: We all know that once teachers have there policies and protections in place they are not going to give them up-so start by redoing teacher retirement, have State wide contracts for all Districts, consolidate some Districts and upper admisistrative salaries,make one school for each County for Special Ed kids with the neccessary teacher's for them, bring the teacher/pupil ratio back up to 18-20 per teacher and then see what needs might have to be adjusted.
You've got to start somewhere and get the special interests out of the process.!!!
Pt 5: Healthcare is not a right-you earn it by yourself and everyone is expected to stand on their own two feet-a common myth is healthcare should be free-come on folks grow up- you get what you pay for because Healthcare IS NOT FREE.!!!

[DCH1950]

The response to your central question "do you care about the kids" is universal (that is unless you are truly a heartless fool). The discussion needs to get directed away from money as an over riding, primary issue. The challenge is the system must function more effectively; not because of more employees and not because of more money. The model does not work on multiple levels and affordability is one of those measurements.

[Glenn Eno]

I believe this is part of the grand plan. If everyday taxpayers cannot grasp how the layers in the system work, they are powerless to change it. I've read through Hugh's posts time after time and I agree with most; it is very difficult to fully grasp the maze that has been laid before us.

I suspect the equalized pupils or circuit breaker methods were put in place to keep the enrollment numbers from going up and down drastically and affecting budgets with wild swings from year to year. I also suspect that the circuit breaker only flows one way; If enrollment goes up 15% in one year it wouldn't be limited by equalized pupils to 3%.

Enrollment is certainly trending downward while costs are trending upward. The circuit breaker tripping next will be at town meetings, when most budgets are up for vote. Taxpayers are becoming increasingly curious about what they are getting for their money. They are finding out the word efficient does not apply to the money spent / product produced equation.

In the end, that is the accountability we deserve.

[G. Cross]

Just for the record, Act 60 and its follow-up Act 68 were designed to overcome the substantial inequitites that existed between school districts. Prior to
Act 60 District A could raise much more money per student than Distict B and A's tax rate was a fraction of B's. The foundation plans, one after the other, were suppose to solve this problem, but they were constantly underfunded and never did. The problem is that as the poorer districts began to equalize their spending with the rich districts, the latter simply spent more and more. So the cycle continues. The expectation was that the high spenders would begin to control their spending due to the tax implications of not doing so. They are only recently beginning to understand the interface between high spending and the staewide education property tax. I suspect there will be major self-correction over the next few years even without further legislative changes. That is what Act 60/68 intended to happen.

[Daniel Foty]

Let's forget about prattle and go right to some quick numbers.

There are many number sources, but I'll cite two here that aren't temporally-compatible but they'll get the point across.

First, 2005 per-pupil-spending by state from here:

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/img/per_student_spending.jpg

Leaving aside Washington DC since it's not a state, the four top states in spending-per-pupil were:

New York: $14,119
New Jersey: $13,800
Vermont: $11,835
Connecticut: $11,572

Now let's look at state GDP per capita for those four (for 2007), from here:

http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/ttw/trends_map_data_table.aspx?trendID=9&assessmentID=43&year=2007&mode=table

New York: $57,158
New Jersey: $53,591
Vermont: $39,506
Connecticut: $61,750

Hmm, which of the four above doesn't belong there?

Vermont has an economy that sits in the state ranks down in the mid-30s, in the company of e.g. Tennessee and Missouri; yet, we're trying to have school spending levels on a par with the wealthiest states in the country.

The separate pieces can be discussed philosophically - but in reality they can't be separated. Together, these two things are neither viable nor sustainable.

You cannot have a champagne public school system built on a light-beer economy. Period.