No compromise
The Senate passed its version of the budget bill on Thursday, and the House approved it over the weekend. It is now headed to the Governor’s office where hopefully she will veto the bill. This bill has been called a compromise between the Governor’s proposal from earlier this year and the original draconian House budget, but it is no compromise. It’s a direct assault on public education with nearly $1 billion in cuts. The reductions will put North Carolina near rock bottom in per pupil spending for K-12 grades. That’s not the direction we want to go.
After two budget cycles that have already made deep cuts into K-12 education, this bill calls for an additional 5.8 percent slice that will hurt every classroom in North Carolina. You’ve probably heard that teachers and teachers assistants have been spared the chopping block, but the truth is that there are just so many crayons you can cut out of the budget, there is a limit on the amount of copier paper you can withhold, and there is a just so much other non-personnel reductions you can make before warm bodies have to fall.
Teachers and teacher assistant positions will be eliminated as a result of this budget. The reason these positions will be eliminated is because the budget demands an additional $122 million in “discretionary reductions” that local superintendents and school boards will have to grapple with, and those cuts won’t just come from the supply closet, I can assure you. The N.C. Department of Public Instruction estimates that this budget will result in 9,300 teacher, teacher assistant and educator layoffs.
“(The budget writers) can say all they want that they aren’t cutting teacher assistants but they are lying,” said Dr. Tim Farley, Superintendent of Granville County Schools. “They say there is this discretionary reduction, and I have to decide where to cut, but I have nowhere else to go but to people. To say I have discretion is a lie.
“I just wish they would be honest about it and not wash their hands of the whole thing,” he added. “They are playing Pontius Pilot. They are washing their hands of this and leaving me to do the crucifixions. It’s absolutely deplorable.”
In Granville, Vance and Warren, and Franklin, school officials have been cutting central office and other support staff over the last four years because of lean budgets. Granville reduced its budget by 45 non-teaching positions (and is facing a loss of 26 teacher assistants this upcoming year). Franklin County is lighter by 30-40 staffers. Superintendent Eddie Ingram is hopeful there may be no layoffs of teacher or teacher assistants, but that won’t mean every position will be filled. The school system will most likely leave unfilled positions open as the school year progresses, he said.
“That doesn’t mean we don’t need them,” he said. “It just means they won’t get filled.”
Ingram said he has contacted representatives and senators to let them know how much the budget will hurt education.
“It seems that with some members of the General Assembly, our pleas have fallen on deaf ears.”
Other major cuts to public education include a 20 percent reduction in funds for Smart Start (North Carolina’s nationally acclaimed pre-kindergarten program that prepares low-income kids for school), $18 million from funding for new textbooks, $20 million from funding for basic school technology (like computers), and $84 million from funding for basic school supplies (like paper and pencils).
The budget also eliminates the N.C. Teaching Fellows and the N.C. Teacher Academy. Teaching Fellows is an organization devoted to recruiting and training outstanding high school students toward becoming teachers for the North Carolina school system. The academy is a professional development program for teachers established and funded exclusively by the North Carolina General Assembly. The mission of the academy is to support continuous learning to the growth of a career teacher by providing quality professional development in the areas of school leadership, instructional methodology, core content, and use of modern technology in order to enrich instruction and enhance student achievement. Again, I have to say, we are going in the wrong direction. The Teaching Fellows and Teacher Academy were established to improve public education in this state, but now we are dismantling the things that have made it great.
Moral Choices
In addition to a stellar public education system, the mark of a great society is that it protects those who are considered the most vulnerable among us—the young, the poor, the elderly. Reductions in Medicaid through this budget will mean that those populations will be hurting in years to come.
I co-chaired the committee that oversaw the Medicaid budget during the last budget cycle, and we committed ourselves to cutting out waste and fraud from the program. These newest cuts totaling over $1.5 billion over the next two years are simply underfunding the programs and will do real harm to real people.
In addition, the legislation allows the General Assembly to be off the hook when it comes time to decide where cuts have to be made. The Governor will have to do the dirty work. It seems the budget writers are playing Pontius Pilot once again: washing their hands of the whole thing and letting someone else make the unpopular decisions.
I proposed an amendment to the budget so that several important programs beneficial to senior citizens would be protected from elimination: preventative dental care for adults, occupational speech and physical therapy, personal care for adults and hospice and palliative care. It is unconscionable that a program aimed at helping patients who are dying from a terminal illness such as cancer could be eliminated under the current budget proposal. People have the right to die with dignity at home regardless of their income.
The amendment was voted down along party lines.
The cuts will have a trickle-down effect. North Carolina will lose millions in federal dollars because for every dollar the state spends, the federal government spends $2. That loss of revenue will translate into nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and dental hygienists being laid off as Medicaid patients will not be able to get the care they need.
Here’s more coverage of the Senate debate and vote on the 2011-13 budget.
Paying Your Dues
The Senate approved a measure last week that will deny teachers and retired teachers the ability to have N.C. Association of Educators dues deducted from their paychecks by the state.
This legislation is aimed at punishing educators for daring to criticize politicians who are gutting the public school system with deep budgetary cuts.
During a broadcast of what was supposed to be a closed meeting of House Republicans on Friday, Speaker Thom Tillis said the NCAE would feel the GOP’s wrath when that chamber approves the bill.
“We just want to give them a little taste of what’s about to come,” he said.
Click here and here to read more about that closed session and what other strategy was leaked.
An estimated 500 other organizations will continue the benefit of having the state collect money to go to their different causes, including the NC Zoological Park, an Alzheimer’s research organization and Planned Parenthood. The State Employees Association of North Carolina, a group that has been very supportive of the General Assembly leadership, also will continue to receive dues collected by the state. Why treat these organizations differently? To punish and intimidate the NCAE, that’s why.
The bill is offensive and mean-spirited, and I am hopeful it will be struck down by the N.C. Supreme Court.
Click here to read News & Observer coverage. WRAL’s coverage can be found here .