United States Needs A Stronger Nation

Charter schools in North Carolina do not receive any funding from the lottery, while public schools do. Teachers complain about how they do not get paid enough. Voters go to the polls and vote for referendums that would hopefully be used for education purposes. Student population is growing, so should the money. Jessica Swencki, spokeswoman for Brunswick County Schools, said “It does not go very far. Brunswick County got about $800,000 last year which went to reroof one of the aging middle schools. The average price on one of those middle school roofing projects is around $1.2 million, so it really pays for about three-fourths of a roof, if you really think about the check that Brunswick County Schools actually receives.” Swencki also stated, “…Whenever the misperception is out there that these dollars are flowing into the public school system may or may not be using them to their fullest extent.” Teachers are starting to go on more strikes to protest for better pay. Schools never received half of the lottery money. Based on poverty concentration, North Carolina received a ‘B’, which was much better than the ‘Fs’ the state received during the early 2000s. North Carolina then cut funding for wealthy districts, but continued to fund for the poorer districts. Well, what followed the cut? Teachers went years without seeing a raise in their salaries. The amount of students in a classroom increased. Countless numbers of teacher assistants were cut from

The National Conference of State Legislatures said, “School budget crunches have been a trend over the past couple years and span the entire nation” (qtd. in Van

In 2013, the state lawmakers restored almost $3.4 billion of the $5.4 billion in public education cuts made in 2011 and changed graduation and testing requirements. Last year, the legislature restored $1.5 billion into schools, which wasn’t enough to cover the previous $5.4 billion cut, when adjusted for enrollment growth and inflation.

The United Stated government only spends about 5,2% of their GDP(global domestic product) for educational purposes, and in money, that is equivalent to $898.5 million out of the $17.97 trillion that they make. (CIA Factbook) Because of this shortage of funding, many schools, especially public schools in Chicago, are forced to work with less money, and don’t allow them to be able to create extracurricular programs for the students, make renovations in the school, or do other things of that nature. The total CPS budget is $5.69 billion, but they are facing a shortfall of one billion dollars.(Bradley) That is about 18% of CPS’ total budget that is being taken away from them. This shows how big a problem these cuts actually are and how much it affects the schools and the community. One of the areas of the country’s budget that could be spent less on is military. The United States’ total discretionary spending, which is the government spending implemented through an appropriations bill and are usually necessities, is around $1.11 trillion in 2015. The military expenditure 53.71% of the total discretionary spending, which is $598.49 billion, while the government only spends 6.28% on education, which is $69.98 billion.(nationalpriorities.org) That is a $528.51 billion difference! Does the United States actually have to spend that much on their military? The United States is the country that spends the most on its military, at about $1.56 trillion

New Jersey is like many other states in the fact that it has budget issues and routinely reduces funding in public education to account for these fiscal woes. However, as the 2011 lawsuit demonstrates, far too often these cuts take place in schools located in poorer communities.

According to article from Chicago Tribune, “The state has a record stack of unpaid bills that's expected to hit $15 billion by July if nothing is done, and it must fork over interest when it's late paying them.” These unpaid bills funds nonprofits agencies, human resources, and even schools. For example, with the recent ending of the stop gate budget “Chicago State, Western and Eastern appealed to Illinois higher education officials for additional emergency funding, with the schools splitting $17 million of a $20 million pot of funds set aside to help the most financially vulnerable universities. The remaining $3 million will be funneled to community colleges.” Many schools are feeling the financial affliction of not having and state budget and will continue to feel the burden till a budget is passed. Not to mention this financial burden is even worse on public schools which are going to continue to lack funding till the budget is passed. Someone else that is feeling the lack of budget is nonprofit and human resources, as“[t]he stopgap authorized roughly $670 million for health and human services, about 65 percent of what providers normally would get.” As a result, many organization are having to cut services due to the lack of funding. This is hurting the people that are most in need, like the lower class, and

In result of the Great Recession (2007-09), many states had to find ways to cut and reduce their budgets. For example, three states fell victims to the budget cut: California, Texas, and Oklahoma. California was forced to reduce its budget by thirty percent for the year of 2009. In result of this, there was a loss of 712 teaching positions along with a fifty percent decrease in programs. Between the years of 2009 and 2012, Oklahoma engaged in a cutback of fifteen percent for its correctional educational programs. After this shortage followed the closing of fifteen skill centers and electrical programs. Lastly, after reducing its state budget by twenty-seven percent, they managed to receive $17.8 million per year for two years. This loss ensued the funding loss for 271 full time workers and lower salaries for all staff.

In recent years this country has seen tremendous cuts to educational budgets at both federal and state levels throughout the country. As a result of this there has been increases in class sizes, the laying off staff and faculty members, reduced programs, and even shortened school calendars. In August of 2012 the Executive Office of the President released a report that states that since the end of the recession (June 2009), “we have lost more than 300,000 local education jobs, raising class sizes and threatening the education of our nation’s children.” (whitehouse). For an excellent example of how those deep budget cuts are effecting education at a state level, we look at Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Funding for education was reduced by approximately $900 million in the 2011-2012 school year. The aforementioned cuts resulted in drastic reduction of programs including arts and music education, layoffs, increase in class size, and reduction in tutoring (cgs). This can be seen in nearly every school district in the country, which not

Leachman, M., Albares, N., Masterson, K., & Wallace, M. (2015). Most states have cut school funding, and some continue cutting. Center on Budget Policy Priorities. Retrieved from

Budget analysis is a process that involves the evaluation if a given budget in order to see its efficiency. When conducting this process, it is crucial to locate the problem areas as well as check if we are reaching the set financial goals. The analysis should be carried out monthly, quarterly or annually as deemed appropriate. In this paper, we prepare an analysis of funding levels for the U.S. Government and its Department of Education, identify trends as you look at 2011 budgets and then compare it with the 2009 and 2010 in terms of the amounts for outlays and receipts, and relationship to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and present a clear and concise conclusion that recaps the highlights of the documents (Official U.S budgets) with final remarks.

     The issue of education best exemplifies the changing nature of intergovernmental relations. State and local governments run their own school systems, and for the most part, fund them as well. States differ from one in another

Since the economic downturn in 2007 and 2008 and even before then, there has been a decline in state appropriations to public colleges and universities (Weisbrod & Asch, 2010). Colleges and universities believe that lawmakers have lost faith and do not believe in them, which have resulted in the significant and constant loss of state appropriations to higher education (Longanecker, 2006).

If the government needs money for anything, there are lots of alternatives for where this money can come from. Each option has it’s own sacrifices that have to be made when reducing funding. Schools, however, do not need any money and they will operate just as effectively no matter how little money they have and are therefore the best place to take money from, right? Wrong. In fact, this statement couldn’t be farther from the truth. Despite this, state and country leaders seem to support this idea, at least judging by their actions. Lack of funding is easily the greatest and most devastating problem in education today as it is not only a problem on its own, but a root cause for most of the issues the education system faces daily.

“Since the recession began in 2008, Oklahoma has sliced funding per student in kindergarten through 12th grade by 23.6 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a policy research organization based in Washington, D.C.”

George Smith wrote that Thomas Jefferson believed the distribution of power among federal, state, county, and local agencies was indispensable to America’s “system of fundamental balances and checks for the government.” (Smith, 2012) Today federal, state, and local governments still play important roles in the operations of public schools through providing funding, policies, scope and organization of school systems. Through the years, the federal government has increased their position in governing public schools, state government works to guide and offer clarification, and local government is responsible for the day to day affairs.