It certainly wouldn’t be as popular as pay raises and tax rebates during an election year, but putting an education budget surplus into the areas where it is most needed would have a far more lasting effect.Instead, our governor and the heads of employee unions are talking rebates and raises.
Gov. Bob Riley thinks he can cobble together a budget that has a $300 million surplus in it, and he is suggesting returning part of that to the taxpayers in the state in the form of a rebate.
AEA chief Paul Hubbert and Mac McArthur, head of the state employees association, are proposing raises for education and state employees.
While each of the suggestions would court favor with constituencies, the bottom line ought to be whether or not it is the best use for the money.
Before there is any grab on the surplus, officials need to make sure funding needs are more than adequately met in both K-12 and in higher education.
Higher education needs additional funding to strengthen its programs and help its competitive stand with other institutions around the country.
In public schools, the highly successful Alabama Reading Initiative, which helps greater numbers of the state’s children learn to read more proficiently, needs to be fully funded. A math, science and technology initiative that holds equal promise needs funding. And painful cuts to programs made three years ago to offset proration of the state’s education budget need to be considered for reinstatement.
The 0 to 5 years of a child’s life are the most critical to learning, yet the state lacks those kinds of programs across Alabama until a child heads to kindergarten at age 5. Oftentimes, that is simply too late, and systems are forced to play catch up rather than truly moving their students – all of them – forward.
There are plenty of pockets of success where pre-k programs are in play, but Alabamians as a whole are slow to recognize the merits because of politicians who pander to their basic notion that they pay too much in taxes or a raise is a fix-all for an ailing system.
If there is a surplus in education coffers, wouldn’t it be fitting to spend those dollars on education programs that work or have the potential to turn this state’s education system around?
A new year is just around the corner and while the rest of us make personal resolutions, what should be happening is a resolution on the state level that 2006 is the year Alabama begins to turn its educational system around by putting funding to the most effective use.
Success should surely follow.
