Originally published at: Poor, Conservative School Districts Are Getting Hit Hard By the GOP’s Funding Freeze - TPM – Talking Points Memo
This story about public school funding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. ASHE COUNTY, N.C. — In the time it took to read an email, the federal money vanished before Superintendent Eisa Cox’s eyes: dollars that supported the Ashe County school…
Got to be careful on educating young Conservatives.
Dumb stupid ones are the best way to stay in power.
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He did say, once upon a time, that he loved the uneducated. I guess we are all headed in that direction now. The States are going to have to pick up the baton. Getting the DOE out of the mix might be a good thing.
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I’ve seen this movie before. The Soda Ash Royalty Reduction Act of 2006 provided for a reduction in the soda ash royalty rate to 2 percent for a period of 5 years beginning on the date of enactment of the Act. The legislation was pushed by WY senator Craig Thomas with the purpose of reducing the 15% on the removal of the mineral trona from federal lands, which is mainly mined at 5 dry-lake sites in 3 states. Nobody else cares.
Ordinarily this wouldn’t seem like much money given that soda ash was only a $6 billion a year business at the time and nearly all the business was controlled by foreign investors (including Colombian drug cartels for money-cleansing purposes), but for the Trona school district in eastern California, well, guess what the federal check from the government paid for each year. The thing is that nobody reacted to the law in Trona until more than a year later when a tiny government check showed up.
It is the duty of legislators to warn constituents of a coming fiscal tsunami when it is so foreseeable.
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Womp, womp,
You broke it, you bought it!
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Well cry me a river.
Careful what you wish for.
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I’ve no doubt the money will flow again once poor, conservative school districts and purplish exurb districts agree to sponsor Turning Point clubs (including in pre-school programs for early conditioning), install ten commandment posters in all classrooms (92 point font minimum) and eliminate all references to slavery, diversity and equality in teaching materials. Oh, and require all educators and staff sign loyalty pledges.
Oh, how I wish this were snark.
It’s not. There’s a reason this was done when school budgets were already set and contracts signed.
PS – Note that any district solid blue is shit out of luck. They won’t be getting a penny.
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Looks like Ashe County voted 71.5% for Trump. I love that they are getting what they overwhelmingly voted for! So often our voices simply aren’t heard, but not in Ashe County, NC. Congrats!
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Clearly, all these people thought / think they will get the special treatment. Like farmers with soybeans in the field, waiting for their last minute bail out. Fiscal conservatism!
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Hold on there, weren’t we told by conservatives that our government was bloated, overspending, interfering in people’s lives (in a bad way) and could do nothing right?
And here is a program that was actually helping people. Who knew?/s
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Yup. I suspect this is a feature, not a bug.
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And yet the farmers didn’t remember what happened in Trump’s first term. They got a bailout.
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“I had teachers crying, staff members crying.”
SPOILER:
Sir. Sir. I never believed you could be such an ass.
The thing about Republican’s behavior is the callousness of it. No warning, no planning. Just pull the rug out from under a blind man and order everyone to laugh and applaud the hot tv star.
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I also think it might, emphasis on the “might”. Assuming we can also get our $264 billion in taxes back from the feds.
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Check off-shore accounts for the missing education money.
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Wasn’t North Carolina that place that was hit by a hurricane, back in the You go Brandon administration? And weren’t FEMA aid workers chased out at gunpoint by gummint-hatin’ residents/hurricane victims?
You might think they deserve to have crappy, unfunded schoold. But if 71% voted Trump, then 29% didn’t. And it’s highly likely that 60% or more of the voting-eligible population just didn’t vote at all. Maybe a lot of them couldn’t get to the polls because of, ya know, that hurricane. So do they all “deserve” to have the legs cut out from under their school systems?
And how about their kids? Not one of them “voted.” So why should they be punished?
Think like Democrats.
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I suspect the trump voters are too dumb to make the connection. Or, if they do on some sub-conscious level, they’ll rationalize it away.
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It’s more of a case of ‘no education was good enough for me; it’s good enough for my kids and grandkids’.
This same discussion was had in WV when the miners were going to be re-trained to safer, better paying jobs. It was rejected vehemently that the mines were good enough for their ancestors; they were good enough for me, my kids and my grandkids.
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trumpism does depend on there being a mass of stupid people, so of course they are starving the schools that MAGAt children attend.
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I observed some retraining of blue-collar men back in the 90s. It became obvious that many resented being there or being in a classroom at their ages. It wasn’t a revelation at the time. Men doing an unskilled or semi-skilled job for years, then thrown into a classroom to learn – say, computer repair? It only works with some of them.
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