There’s an other-worldly quality to the political rhetoric surrounding school budgeting in this time of scarcity. It’s as if Democrats, who are absolutely beholden to teacher and other public-sector unions, live in an alternate universe where up is down and vice versa.
Gov. Bev Perdue has attacked the GOP state budget by saying it will cause “generational damage” in education. Question: Bev, where have you been for the past 40 years as Democratic and liberal hokum and new-age multi-culti diversity ideas have done more generational damage than can ever be calculated. Oh, I forgot. As an “educator,” you were part of the problem.
And U.S. Rep. David Price seems intent on making things worse. He’s introduced something he calls the “Keeping Teachers Teaching Act.” To be accurate, it should be called the “Keeping Teachers Teaching Act Even If We Can’t Afford Them and There’s No More Money,” which is the actual case right now.
“We’re still losing way too many teachers,” Price said. “So many are dropping out in early career or mid-career. I just think we need to give some incentive to states and localities.”
As a newsroom manager for many years I learned that in times of downturn, vacant positions can keep you from actually having to show someone the door. The more vacant positions you have, the fewer people you have to lay off. It’s a simple concept, but not one that Price seems to grasp.
The best thing for education in North Carolina is for the positions of all the people leaving the education profession to be kept open. That way, when the axe falls, many of the eliminated jobs will have no actual employees in them.
But Price wants us to make a Herculean effort to fill those jobs that keep opening. Does he not care if these people get laid off when it becomes clear to even the densest Democrat that there simply is no more money? Or does he just want to keep the rolls of the teacher union full so that those dues, and campaign contributions, keep flowing to Democrats?
My money is on the latter.
UPDATE: We’ve had reports from all over North Carolina, and from friends and relatives who work in schools, that unprecedented lobbying efforts are being made by the Governor’s Office, Democratic Party and the NCEA to indoctrinate young children into the belief that Republicans want to kill the elderly, starve the poor and un-educate the youth. Here’s some indication that these efforts by the governor, et al., are having some effect, at least on first-graders.
