Public Education Funding Remains at Risk

America will stand or fall on the quality of our educational programs.  Although many pundits like to argue about how schools should be run and how students should be taught, most of this debate should be a matter for the educators to work out.  What our politicians have mostly failed to do is ensure the long-term stability of our public education system.  And by this I don't mean testing and rewards and standards - I mean funding.

To get an idea of how strapped some schools have become, take a look at this example of how the San Francisco City College has begun soliciting donations to keep classes open.

In another story, my aunt mentioned how the school district in Winona, MN was trying to close a local school when they had the opportunity to turn it into a magnet program.  She's said that the school board voted to keep the school open for now, but it sounded like a close save.  To learn more, see the article in the Winona Daily News or my Essay on the Importance of Public Education.

On the plus side, not everyone is taking this news quietly.  In North Carolina, for example, the NC Association of Educators (NCAE) and the NC Parent-Teacher Association (NC PTA) is organizing a Fund Schools First Rally and March for this upcoming Saturday.

I think that one reason the financing issue for education is so difficult is because the bulk of the expense for public education falls to local governments.  Although I agree with this in principal, you can see from these graphs of NC State and Local Expenditure that nearly a third of the state and local budget goes to education.  And yes, this is good, but it also means that the schools have more to lose when state budgets fall short (as seen in this ABC Local New Story from 2009: NC Education Budget Could Be Slashed).

Unfortunately, much of the budget haggling over education funding is a symptom of the times.  We live in a country where the Baby Boomers are soon to retire en masse and tax revenues are down because of the economy.  This leads to a dangerous fiscal juggling act, as seen when the Chicago Public Schools Dodge a Budget Bullet by cutting contributions to pension funds.

The solution, unfortunately, will not be simple.  If we take a look at the 2010 Federal Budget, you'll note that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest payments on the debt take up over 50% of our budget (it's actually closer to 60%).  And you want to know what's even more scary?  It's projected that the government will barely take in enough money to cover these mandatory expenses - the rest of the budget (including most of our defense budget and, of course, our education budget) is only possible through additional borrowing, driving up the debt even more.