Posted on 05/16/2005 2:24:48 PM PDT by calcowgirl
The multimillion-dollar campaign paid by starving teachers unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate.
Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's scorched-earth budget is approved -- a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public-school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year.
That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering.
As a public-school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days.
Maybe -- as a temporary measure only -- we should spend our school dollars on our schools. I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures.
The governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisers and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.
So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000 per year with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences.
This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.
To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let's use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year.
We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space. Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400.
This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We'll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambience.
Next, we'll need to hire five teachers, but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we'll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student's name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.
Since our conventional gym classes haven't stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. Finally, we'll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because, well, I don't know exactly why, but we always have.
Our bare-bones budget comes to this:
5 classrooms -- $158,400 150 desks @ $130 -- $19,500 180 annual health club memberships @ $480 -- $86,400 2,160 textbooks @ $80 -- $172,800 5 CSU associate professors @ $67,093 -- $335,465 1 administrator -- $80,000 1 secretary -- $40,000 24 percent faculty and staff benefits -- $109,312 Offices, expenses and insurance -- $30,000 TOTAL -- $1,031,877L
The school I have just described is the school we're paying for. Maybe it's time to ask why it's not the school we're getting.
Other, wiser, governors have made the prudent decision not to ask such embarrassing questions of the education-industrial complex because it makes them very angry. Apparently the unions believe that with enough of a beating, Gov. Schwarzenegger will see things the same way.
Perhaps. But there's an old saying that you can't fill a broken bucket by pouring more water into it. Maybe it's time to fix the bucket.
Tom McClintock represents the 19th District in the California state Senate. Write to him by e-mail at tom.mcclintock@sen.ca.gov.
School districts throughout the country spend increasing amounts each year, yet learning levels of the students seem to decrease in most cases. McClintock has laid out the case well, showing how a modest budget could amply provide for all aspects of the education system.
I hope he's successful in his bid for lieutenant governor. The state needs this man.
WTF?!
Are you deranged? I would have felt betrayed if Tom HAD dropped out. Nearly every grassroots activist I know not only wanted Tom to win but wanted him IN the race as well.
It was largely the squishly-centered Republican leadership of the counties and state committee that wanted Tom out. They believed Schwarzenegger deserved (why I do not know) the deference and unquestioning loyalty due a deity. Their motto was and has always been: Win no matter what the cost.
If Tom had dropped out, not only myself but a great many other Republicans would have been left without a candidate.
Ask around Sacramento. The leadership of the GOP doesn't like Tom because he doesn't take marching orders from the party bosses. He follows his conscience. Look at damn near ANY final spending or budget bill vote in the Senate that the GOP Caucus officially backs. Chances are it'll be something like 39 yeas, 1 nay. Guess who that 1 nay is going to be 9 times out of ten? Tom McClintock. The ONLY legislator in California unequivocally standing up for the taxpayer.
Would you please drop this silly battle. It is unworthy and divisive. McC is a good man and he continues to fight the good fight. Arnie is a good man and continues to fight the good fight. We should encourage Arnie and McC to work together. Both individuals have expressed that willingness. Let us follow their example.
You seem to be laboring under the queer assumption that the CA Republican Party has anything to do with conservatism.
For example, Richard Riordan, Schwartzenegger's mentor and supposed Republican (who would have run for governor in the recall, if Arnie hadn't cut him off at the knees one day before the filing deadline), has publicly endorsed Villariagosa for L.A. Mayor, a job he used to hold. That's the kind of starch conservatism that the Party apparatchiks are made of in California.
Hi libertarian. I know, let's split the next conservative vote out of principle to get a Democrat elected.
NO THANKS!
He is exactly NOT a good man.
He attempted to split the party vote two ways with only one democrat who had all their vote together.
With McClintock staying in that race, all he did was enable a possible Democrat victory with his help. That does NOT MAKE HIM A GOOD MAN. That makes him a traitor to the state as far as I see it.
No way you can call him a GOOD MAN if you acknowledge his last election's behavior.
McClintock's actions speak louder than words, and we must all remember them FOREVER.
Hmm. Let's see if your recollection matches mine. McClintock and Schwartzenegger: during the recall lead up, who was among the leading supporters from the time of the earliest grass roots, and who jumped in one day before the filing deadine for candidates?
Who was in the race from the beginning and promised to follow through on many occasions, and who stabbed his mentor in the back on national television?
Who was clearly in the lead of conservative candidates until the other jumped in after all the gruntwork of the recall initiative had been accomplished?
Who gave straight answers during the debate, and who mushed out populism?
Who was it who really entered the race to be a splitter?
BS. If the Dems had "all their vote together", Bustamonte would have been untouchable. Arnie is the one who split the vote by jumping the line late in the game.
Damn I like this guy!
"The leadership of the GOP doesn't like Tom because he doesn't take marching orders from the party bosses. He follows his conscience."
The Tom McClintock conscious consists exclusively of Tom's career and not Republicans or other conservatives. What he did was attempted potential sabotage to appease the few who would stand behind him. I wouldn't call that conservative at all. I call that dangerous and bad judgment. More like sabotage in the name of extremism.
Maybe you want a good end for California, but the McClintock method of burning bridges and ignoring the people and party is a very caustic approach that would never provide adhesion.
The only known method to effect a permanent change in a political climate has been always through steps that lead up to the end goal over time. To expect to reach an end goal all at once is immature, elongates getting to where we want to be and in the case of McClintock, brings the crazy cousin out of the closet.
Tom would best serve the state as a behind the scene policy wonk or file clerk where the damage he would cause could be minimized.
Tom IMO is fooling people like you to further his career, that is all.
California needs to find new people for the future beyond Arnold or Tom. Arnold was a few beginning nice steps in the right direction, Tom is the unlikable dead end to nowhere.
The future lies elsewhere and not with Tom McClintock, unless you want to get more democrats elected. Do you believe a low result candidate should stay in a race to split the vote in favor of Democrats as Tom did? You find that behavior Kosher do you?
The Dems only did not get all their votes together due to Arnold having massive cross over appeal.
In a gazillion years, you would not have gotten the vote from the other side that Arnold got using McClintock. Arnold was the right candidate for this time. He's not perfect, but he is the beginning steps in the right direction for the future of the state.
The next steps in California after Arnold will be to find new candidates that can slide the bar further right some more so the voter's are slowly educated to vote eventually more on the conservative side.
McClintock is not a candidate capable of bringing anyone to the right from the left. His methods of politics are toxic, impatient and show a lack of wisdom. He will not rise in California. He will never become Governor.
If anything, he sets us back steps.
Memory serves that McClintock always lusted for power, that Arnold wanted to go in, but wasn't sure he wanted to give up his lucrative career to serve the people.
Being to hold office was one of Arnold's ambitions in life, being the state was in rotten shape looking like another Democrat would be elected, many begged Arnold to get in.
Thank God he did or we'd be under Governor Cruz right now.
Only Arnold at this time in CA politics had the ability to gather cross over votes to take down Democrat challengers.
McClintock has the cross over appeal to Democrats of a Pat Buchanan on steroids.
This from an Arnold bootlicker. As if his political entry isn't all about his career.
And let me buy you a clue: anyone from the Riordan wing of the CA Republican Party is in no way, shape, or form a conservative, so please retire your sorry, worn out strawman. They are merely Democrats who don't like paying taxes (but, as on every other issue, they are willing to compromise on that principle).
I wish he runs outside of California. It seems he is doomed there, but would have broad appeal in the pro-free enterprise red states.
And how is that going to happen, when the Party won't support such candidates? Or, perhaps you've forgotten how they hamstrung Simon's campaign, which is why we ended up with Davis in the first place. Even a mildly conservative candidate like Simon was abandoned by the Party as "unelectable" by the same sort of people as you.
Instead, we get Party apparatchiks like you, who spend orders more of magnitudes of voluminous bile on real Conservatives than you do on libs or do-nothing "conservatives", such as infest the State government.
Instead, we get functionaries, whose only conservative instinct is how to conserve their own power base.
Instead, we get a Party so weak in values that it cannot muster a single candidate capable of challenging a lunatic loser such as Boxer for a Senate seat of the most populous State in the Union.
Don't bitch at ME for not supporting the California Republican Party in their bumbling ineptitude. The purpose of a Party is to further MY interests, not vice versa.
More BS. Bustamonte was permanently stuck below 40%. California would not have chosen "Grey lite". They would have defeated the recall, first.
If McClintock had dropped out of the race, Gray Davis would still be in office - the recall would have failed.
1. Despite the "No on Recall, Yes on Bustamante" rhetoric that the Dems were putting out, there were a statistically significant number of Dems who wanted to see Bustamante in the Governor's chair over Davis, so they voted "Yes on Recall, Yes on Bustamante". If McClintock had dropped out and an Arnie landslide was imminent, they would have voted "No" on the recall.
2. The conservative base would have stayed home. This demographic was overwhelmingly pro-recall, but without a conservative candidate on the ballot, they wouldn't have bothered standing in the long lines at the polling place to hold their nose and vote for Arnie.
The recall passed by less than 1,000,000 votes... These two changes would have swung the Recall in Davis's favor.
If I recall correctly, Tom was in the race before Schwarzenegger, so wouldn't that make Herr Arnold the man threatening to split the GOP vote?
And I do hope you'll remember that McClintock outpolled EVERY GOP nominee in November 2002, better than Simon, better than Olberg, and certainly better than the RINOs the CRP was gushing over and diverted most of the campaign cash to.
Tom came within an eyelash of winning. That's not what I call a low result candidate.
And it's funny, I don't know a single Republican, even among the Schwarzenegger's followers, who think Tom's refusal to sellout is due to personal ambition and interests. And even it it were - I DON'T CARE. I care about his ideas and the ideas he pursues, and they're the best out there and right in line with my own.
And how is that going to happen, when the Party won't support such candidates? Or, perhaps you've forgotten how they hamstrung Simon's campaign, which is why we ended up with Davis in the first place. Even a mildly conservative candidate like Simon was abandoned by the Party as "unelectable" by the same sort of people as you.Instead, we get Party apparatchiks like you, who spend orders more of magnitudes of voluminous bile on real Conservatives than you do on libs or do-nothing "conservatives", such as infest the State government.
Instead, we get functionaries, whose only conservative instinct is how to conserve their own power base.
Instead, we get a Party so weak in values that it cannot muster a single candidate capable of challenging a lunatic loser such as Boxer for a Senate seat of the most populous State in the Union.
Don't bitch at ME for not supporting the California Republican Party in their bumbling ineptitude. The purpose of a Party is to further MY interests, not vice versa.
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