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Guest Opinion: Shooting the messenger won’t solve school funding crisis
We in Montana confront significant challenges in coming up with solutions to the problems facing the state. We all know what it takes to deal with challenges in our own lives. First there needs to be recognition of the problem and then the application of clear thinking, honesty, wisdom and courage. The same ingredients make for good public policy.
By TONIA BLOOM
Montana School Boards Association
So it is has been dismaying recently to observe a number of legislators and other policy makers engaging in some rather different responses to the challenges confronting public education. In September, a key state senator published an editorial attacking the recently completed study of school funding by independent experts, as well as those who have asked the courts to rule on the constitutionality, on the basis of adequacy and equity, of the current funding system. Recently full-page ads, paid for by several Montana legislators, have appeared in newspapers around the state, purporting to demonstrate that there is, in fact, no school funding problem.
Shooting the messenger who brings the bad news or burying one’s head in the sand are certainly time-honored human responses to situations we’d just as soon not have to face. However, they are not particularly effective strategies for actually solving problems. By concentrating on and disseminating out-of-context data, selected to make a point, legislators deprive themselves of a fuller understanding and, in the end, deceive only themselves. There are some stubborn facts that will not go away.
Inherent inequities
The fact is that state funding for schools, both in total and on a per pupil basis, has fallen behind inflation by more than $64 million since 1994. The fact is that, while increased local levies have compensated for some of the deficit, those local levies are inherently inequitable and have created large tax disparities between districts and increased the burden on local property taxes.
Those who attempt to deny that there is a school funding problem point to some recent increases in federal funds, but ignore the fact that those funds are attached to specific federal mandates and may not be used to supplant local or state monies. The fact is that each year schools struggle to meet greater expectations, responsibilities and expenses in the areas of special education and student testing, imposed by both the state and federal governments, without corresponding increases in funding to adequately compensate for the new mandates.
The fact is that state schools face a genuine and escalating teacher shortage, the consequence of low rates of teacher compensation and increasingly high debt burdens incurred by recent graduates of the education programs of Montana universities. The fact is that more and more schools around the state are finding themselves unable to hire qualified staff or afford the programs required to meet minimum state accreditation standards, let alone those necessary for a quality education for all children.
Careful analysis needed
Finding solutions to this crisis will require that we take our heads out of the sand and stop spending our time taking aim at those who bring the issues to our attention.
The first step is to recognize and take a clear look at the problem. A great deal of information and objective analysis has been done this year. The reports of the Governor’s Public School Funding Advisory Council and of the Interim Education and Local Government Committee, the findings of the school funding adequacy study undertaken by the nationally recognized authorities Augenblick and Myers, and the Montana Board of Public Education’s report "Who Will Teach Montana’s Children?" all provide careful analysis and some answers about what is needed. Resources such as these provide the basis for an honest public discussion and can form the basis for wise decisions by legislators and other policy makers.
Our public schools are the product of a unique kind of compact between generations, whereby today’s adults agree to provide for the education of the next generation. This compact has served our country well and is the foundation of our economic prosperity and system of self-government. The maintenance of this compact requires that we all be willing to think beyond our most immediate self-interest and that we act and demand that our political system act on behalf of the only major segment of the population that cannot vote. Keeping this in mind will ensure that our decisions are wise, courageous and farsighted.
Tonia Bloom, a trustee on the Corvallis School Board, is president of the Montana School Boards Association.
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