Education vs. Budget Cuts

During the twentieth century, Texans struggled to maintain acceptable funds for public education. Schools were short on funds, leading them to be short on school supplies, and textbooks. In 1949, the state legislature passed three bills to help with this issue. These bills also helped reconstruct the public education in Texas. These bills were known as the Gilmer-Aikin Laws. They helped raise teacher’s salaries regardless of race or sex, established minimum standards for teacher training, and mandated a nine-month academic year for students. (Erekson

Nelson Mandela once stated, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. Arizona understands how powerful and important education is which is why they are going to correct their way by fixing their public education funding. They plan to do this by passing Proposition 123. Proposition 123 is a ballot that will settle a years-long lawsuit, and provide money that Arizona’s K-12 public schools will have access to without raising taxes. There are those who are hesitant about it and are voting no. However, I believe this is a fantastic idea because this is a stepping stone to a better funding, teachers deserve better pay and resources are extremely important when it comes to learning.Knowing Arizona is ranked 49th out of 51 states per pupil in K-12 spending you would

Since last spring, Philadelphia school district leaders have been sounding the alarm about this year’s fiscal budget. Even after months of discussions and headlines, schools have opened with fewer resources than last year. On March 28th the School Reform Commission approved a lump sum budget which showed a need for an additional $220 million in revenue in order to provide schools with same resources as the “wholly insufficient” 2013-14 school year (McCorry). There will be many inadequate funding impacts on the quality of the education. Classroom resources would be stripped to untenable levels. The district would reduce as much as $2.2 million funding to the districts’ multiple pathways to graduation program which affects estimated 300 students. Another $1.5 million could be reduced from the elimination of preparation and professional development time for teachers at the district’s high needs promise academies. The district’s building maintenance budget could have reduction in amount of $9.6 million. Schools will be cleaned less frequently as a result. Building maintenance will also be curtailed as a result. District’s school police budget could also have reduction in amount of $2.4 million. School police officer vacancies will be unfilled, leaving an additional 27 elementary schools to share an officer.

I believe that education is essential to America’s future generations and how well we can compete with the rest of the world in diverse fields, therefore school funding should not be cut. The budget for the Department of Education has been reduced and cut in many ways. Some solutions the government thought they had found, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, turned out to increase the budget, rather than reduce it. The cutting of teachers’ unions and reduction of class sizes have also been suggested to reduce budget. Although some of these sound easy and appealing, they won’t necessarily help reduce the Department of Education’s spending.

The Texas Constitution guarantees an "efficient system of public free schools," but schools have recently found themselves unable to provide an adequate education to the more than 5 million students in Texas because of the many problems within the education policy in the state. Such issues involve school financing, lack of preparation for college, early childhood education, teacher quality, and school choice. Tough all of these conflicts pose a potential threat to the school system’s competence and effectiveness as well as to Texas’ economy, there are a broad number of possible adjustment and reforms that could be placed to improve the adequacy of Texas’ school system.

Texas faces many problems with the current educational system and many of them continue to go unresolved due to the way Texas has established certain laws. A decline in education has been seen since 2006 when legislators decided to cut property tax which pays for education (Maule). Those policies only further hinder the progress of education improving, which is why policies like those do not need to be further implemented. More involvement with students is needed and that will be acquired by having more effective teachers. Many studies have shown that students with effective teachers do better in class than those with ineffective teachers. Not only do students do poorly with ineffective teachers, but “[s]tudies show that most students drop out due to poor academic performance. And studies have proven that the teacher in the

That means that out of 50 states there is only one state where teachers are paid worse. The feeling is that if the teachers are paid higher salaries more people might go into the field. Which means there would be more people to choose from that are actually qualified. Texas should be worried about the future this information predicts because if teachers aren’t paid equally there is a good chance they will move to states that have a competitive salary. To improve this reality Texas needs to give every resident the choice of school district. The guidelines should not be drawn by county but should be drawn by the willingness of the parent to travel and enforce a perfect attendance record for the student and also the hard work and effort put forth by the student to achieve high marks on their report card. By doing this I believe Texas’ Scholastics Assessment Test (SAT) scores which as of now rank 46 out of 50 will greatly improve. The student will strive to do better because they will know that the penalty of them doing poorly will result in transferring to a school closer to their

11.13). When it comes to addressing the performance issues facing Texas schools, issues facing the poor, the reality of a water shortage, and problems relating to transportation, there is great reluctance among Texas Republicans when it comes to expanding the government’s role in improvements, as well as in raising the necessary funds through taxation. The Texas Politics Project (2017) explains that when it comes to the current state of Texas schools, supporters of a more fiscally conservative approach feel that such an approach “at least achieves average results with below-average spending” (p. 11.9). The current conservatism that defines the overall political approach in Texas may not be adequate in the long term. As we are seeing, changing demographics are substantially impacting the state of Texas and will likely lead to necessary changes throughout the state.

In our reading "Choices are Everywhere: Why can't we just have it all?" from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis we learned that social security, national defense and healthcare programs are the top government spending categories (2013). While I believe all three are good places, I also feel like that 528.4 million dollars could have gone to our education system (not all but definitely some). According to usgovernmentspending.com the United States, in 2014, spend $1,283,079.6 million on healthcare (this includes local, state, and federal) while $962,948.4 million went to education (Total 2014 Government Spending). That is a $320,131.2 difference between total healthcare and education funding. I believe that is the opportunity cost; some of the money that went to PP that could have gone to education.

Public education in the state of Texas is not at its best right now. Students are not being challenged to think anymore. As the second most populous state of the United States, I believe that Texas should be at the top of public education not only in the country, but in the world. We should change how and what teacher are teaching to students. Now days we go to school to memorize keywords so we can graduate and get a diploma. After that, some students that don’t go to college don’t reuse the information that was taught to them for four years, so basically the schools wasted resources and money, and students lost time. I believe we can and should strike for greatness and change the public education system from head to toe. Learning is a fun activity to do and school should not just be about going to class and learn how to pass an exam or get good grades in a class. Learning is about gaining knowledge and applying that knowledge to learn and discover new things about that topic.

Public schools in Texas are disproportionately funded due to the state formulas contained in the Foundation School Program. As Governor, we need to change the state's formulas to truly distribute funding between public schools in Texas fixing the inequities. By changing the formula and making it more transparent, the legislature will be able to more effectively address the issues. I want the school’s to receive the same amount of resources so that every student may thrive and grow into the best they can be no matter where they live.

This budget contains grants, reimbursements from schools, and payments that is from schools. $72.9 billion was set aside for public and higher education institutions. Most of the money is difficult to get if it is for a project that it was not intended for. Since the legislature cannot take money out of these two accounts when they would like, they just cut the budget. This is to give them more wiggle room in other areas that they would like to see the budget go to. There is a cycle that can be seen throughout the government. If the state wants money they need to spend what they have in order to receive federal

Budget cuts in schools cause turmoil and stress among the students and faculty. Drastic changes in the budgets have caused schools to negatively impact the people around them. With the lack of funding, schools are facing difficult decisions on what to do to stay within their budget. Supervision is facing much scrutiny on how to handle the lack of funding in their school districts. A solution needs to be made to improve the distribution of funding to our schools in order to keep them operating and thriving for our children to obtain their education. Budget cuts in schools have shown negative effects on employee positions, supplies, extracurricular activities.

In today’s economic environment even the wealthiest states and districts are having to cut funding for education, while districts which were already teetering on the edge are now in an even worse position. In some schools children have to face not having enough books, paper for copies, severe overcrowding,

In addition, insufficient funding of schools along with quality teachers that are retiring are some of the problems we encounter in the education system. In some parts of the United States, there is a lack of adequate access to materials for reading and writing due to budget constraints. In Allen D. Kanner’s article, “Today’s Class Brought to You By…” he mentioned that with the baby boomers retiring, and a high turnover among new teachers, who are asked to teach subjects they are not properly trained for, are causing difficult classroom situations (280). Similarly, Governor Jerry Brown’s statement last January 11 pointed out that K-12 education has ‘borne the brunt’ of the state’s budget cuts with more than $18 billion in cuts over the last three years. This resulted in larger class sizes, programs are cut, and over 30,000 educators laid off. These teachers are very valuable in our society because they provide our youth with the knowledge and social experiences that they will use to better their future and the future of the entire world. As a student, I have suffered the consequences of triple digit fee increases and the lack of available classes offered. The high cost of education has put the burden not only on the students, and many of their parents, but educators, as