The only “will of the people” that counts in this state is if you’re Tim Eyman or a Republican. If you voted for smaller class sizes some years back, tough cookies.
The budget cuts millions from K-12, higher education and other state services. It directs state agencies to save around $50 million through furloughs or other pay reductions for some state employees.
For K-12, the budget cuts mean $120 million less for the state’s public schools. Education advocates say those cuts, on top of the ones made last year, are going to hurt.
Lawmakers, for example, eliminated $79 million in funding for the class-size reduction initiative, I-728.
“That was one of the last pots of discretionary money that districts had,” said Dan Steele of the Washington State School Directors Association.
OTOH, if you’re a coal fired power plant “the people” are with you. The Republicans keep carping on the meme that state government is broken and doesn’t respond to the will of the people. Yeah, no shit. People voted by a large margin to tax themselves to get smaller class sizes, yet here we are again. But we have to call special sessions to deal with certain initiatives, lest the editorial board fainting couches collapse.
As usual the GOP-editorial board complex has it bass ackwards–the biggest problem is a viciously regressive tax system that relies far too heavily on revenue that crashes and burns during economic downturns. Then we cut education, rinse, repeat, seemingly at least once a decade. Way to compete in a global economy!
I’m sure all those candidates out there wandering around claiming they are about “job, jobs, job,” will acknowledge all this. Or not. Easier to start screaming about sex offenders I suppose.
I don’t even really bother following the session that much any more, it’s all so predictable. Fuck you, Washington students and teachers, you eat it again. Maybe the coal mine will reopen.
There’s no surer way to “create jobs” than by raising the unemployment rate by firing state workers!
Morans.
We can pay sports stars millions, we can pay hundreds of millions of golden parachute money to CEO’s who crash their compainies like they’re a drunk driver, but we can’t pay teachers? We can’t insure kids? Working class folks have to pay $25 to camp at a state park? Fuck that.
And dear legislators, fuck you.
William Ouchi argues that total student load (per teacher) should be about 80.
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-T.....1439121583
A friend of mine teaches middle school. She has 140 students. Every day.
How does a teacher even grade that many papers, write that many evaluations, pay attention to that many students?
Another HA blogger going well out of his way to work newspaper editorial boards into his post? Pssst. John, you got the job. You don’t have to feign anger at Goldy’s imaginary nemesis anymore.
I think it’s a pretty exciting time for education in America. Two innovations that I’m really jazzed about:
Teach for America
http://www.teachforamerica.org/
Harlem Children’s Zone
http://www.hcz.org/
These organizations, and others, are advancing the art and science of education. Reality-based improvements, not just snake oil.
Meanwhile…
The trogs want me to fund their kid’s private prep school education (aka vouchers).
Or shunt money for students from the classroom to their cronies (standardized testing, aka Leave No Child Behind).
The DC school system taught us that low class sizes and lots of money don’t mean shit.
An educated population is anathema to a capitalist society. Decades of deliberate neglect and outright vandalism by people who call themselves “conservatives” have made it impossible to maintain a system that they oppose on moral grounds. The idols of wealth and power have replaced those of knowledge and study.
We don’t need geologists, paleontologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, metallurgists, engineers, psychiatrists, biologists, chemists, physicists or mathematicians. We don’t need people to be studying political science, sociology or psychology. Such people tend to notice and illustrate flaws that the capitalists don’t want people to hear about. Educated people tend to point out problems, and nobody wants to know about problems, they interfere with profits.
And profit is the only god they need. Money is the idol. Banks are the churches, and commerce is the penetance.
The only faith you need citizen, is the faith in money. The only worship we will allow, is that which feeds the most deserving of profit.
There can be no sin or crime in pursuit of profit. The most deserving are those who were born into profit, and pass that profit along to the next generation along with the knowlege of aquisition of profit. This knowlege is sacred, and shall not be allowed to disseminate amongst the greater part of the population as it will result in loss of your profit to less deserving people.
The least deserving are those who persue knowlege and understanding outside the faith, who do not seek profit or place it above all other human endeavors. People who would destroy your profits by preventing you from conducting buisiness by usurping the faith.
Such people are your enemy, and seek only to destroy you and your faith. Education is the wedge they drive between the faithful and their profits, and schools are the temples they erect to oppose the faith. These dens of sin and secularism must be destroyed.
Therefore such people who seek profit above all things are without sin, and should not be burdened with the sins of non-deserving people, nor shall they be subjected to secularist laws that would interfere with the aquisition of profit.
Did I get that right, randroids?
@7 So, in wingnut crazy backwards anti-reality world (ie. Republican) you believe BIGGER class sizes increase performance and education? Really? Like all idiot republicans (goes without saying) you argue only by anecdote. Looking around the NATION, all things being equal (comparing schools of similar wealth, size, etc) smaller class sizes are ALWAYS better. Anti fact, anti reality, anti science, anti common sense…the new Republican party. Who needs FACTS! They have opinions!
“rinse, repeat”
The basic problem indeed. Core services (education, fire, police) can NOT roller-coaster up and down with changes in the economy. In other words we have to provide education and fire protection regardless of if we’re in a recession or not. Sure we can ‘put off’ some maintenance and new schools, fire stations, etc…but the services continue. It’s irony, always. The worse the recession, the MORE you need services (more free school lunches, more social services). These need to be funded in such way that their budgets don’t swing wildly.
where’s the seattle times pulitzer party tonight?
@2 “…we can pay hundreds of millions of golden parachute money to CEO’s who crash their companies like they’re a drunk driver…”
As a matter of fact, right now Kerry Killinger (Hmmm…rhymes with “Dillinger”) is sitting in front of a Senate committee, smugly blaming everyone and their sister Kate for his having taken one of the best-run banks on the planet and turned it into a bombed out ruin in a few short, arrogant, greedy years.
@10,
Where is Goldy’s Pulitzer Prize Party? Oh, he didn’t get one? Too bad…
Ah, but it is a fully Democratic legislature that did this. They cut the budget for K-12 and higher education even in good times. This isn’t an evil Republican plot. This is quaking in your boot, mealy-mouthed scared little Democratic bunny rabbits who did this. The “buy back” for new taxes were NEVER GOING TO INCLUDE K-12 or Higher Education. At the beginning of the session, Victor Moore made that clear. It was never even discussed. What they did do was restore State Need Grant financial aid that was also going to get cut, but all the cuts that were originally presented by the democratic governor survived the regular and special session.
In K-12 they didn’t just cut class size, they cut money to the school districts that will result in significant give backs and layoffs of teachers and support staff.
In higher education, it cuts an awful lot. It makes the job harder to do. And you have to do it with much less. I could go into all the ways this makes the experience less rich for college students, but the choir already knows this. College students will pay more for an education that is far less of a value than previously.
And it is the DEMOCRATS FAULT for not having a pair. Of the estimated 1550 new jobs lost in the state, on top of the ones lost last year, most of them come from the education sector. So when you think of state government, it isn’t your favorite bureaucrats who suffer, it is educators.
“People voted by a large margin to tax themselves to get smaller class sizes”
Uh no, Jon, I gotta disagree with you on this. What actually happened is the voters approved the two initiatives to reduce class sizes and boost teacher pay, but on the same ballot, rejected the penny sales tax increase to pay for them. So, far from voting “by a large margin to tax themselves,” the people voted against taxing themselves to pay for the stuff they voted for.
I’m surprised you forgot about this famously schizophrenic election, because it has served as a kind of poster boy for voter irrationality in our state.
It’s true the legislature, prodded by newly-elected Governor Gregoire, eventually appropriated funding to implement the two initiatives. But that was before the revenue collapse. And what the legislature gives, it can take away, in an exigency.
Meanwhile, courts simply can’t, either jurisdictionally or practically, order legislative bodies to impose taxes or spend money in most circumstances. Where, as here, voters approve spending but reject the funding mechanism, not even the gods who sit on the state supreme court can make something out of nothing.
So, unfortunately, the factual premise of your argument is wrong.
It was Senate DUMMOCRAPTS who killed the WA DC voucher program for poor minorities.
Because, the state has specific laws in the Constitution that forbid subsidizing private corporations with State funds.
Voucher programs are specific to private for-profit schools. Schools that regularly do nothing to actually educate kids, and do everything to guarantee maximum cash flow for the companies that own them. It is the same with private, for-profit prison corporations, they seek to make money, and not provide service. They will cut corners, outright fabricate the appearance of service and hide the true nature of their industry while hiding, shifting and manipulating revenue by using shell companies and manipulation of stock prices through inside trades and manufactured demand of the “services” they seek to provide.
They are also the largest and most vocal lobbyists for new, stricter laws against the citizenry, and less regulation of their respective industries, as well as being the largest contributors to the political campaigns of Judges, Attorneys General and Legislators.
For-profit schools and prisons should be banned outright at the Federal Level.
Troll @ 7, re: small class sizes
Hasty generalization for the win.
Puddy @ 15, re: incoherent gibberish (ad nauseum)
Irrelevant thesis for the win.
Once again Jason Osgood proves how STUPID he is. Then he uses useless and worthless commentary to back up his stupidity.
Here’s the proof.
Here is it again and how DUMMOCRAPTS killed it again.
You see arschloch… Puddy has to repeat himself because HA Libtardos like Jason Osgood have 24 hour mindless moronic Moonbat! memory malady.
Senate DUMMOCRAPTS don’t care for the will of the people and they definitely don’t care about inner city minority kids.
Puddy @ 18
Obama Proposes $10-Million to Expand Harlem Children’s Zone Approach
http://philanthropy.com/blogPo.....-to/11008/
Versus your big idea: Corporate welfare.
HCZ has proven results.
At best, vouchers sometimes match public schools. At worst, they hide the problems, cherry pick the good kids, or just pocket the cash.
For the record, I enthusiastically support anyone who opposes school vouchers. We tried it. It failed. Time to move on.
Ignorance knows no bounds when it comes to the anti-government crowd. Let’s face it-they have no information to draw any valid conclusions as to the running of government. I always love the one about budgeting the government like your household budget…does it get any more simple-minded than that…well, yes it can! The fact is, the class-size initiative and the cost-of-living adjustment initiatives passed with far more votes than any of the inane “tax” measures sponsored by Eyman, the Republicans and their ilk. Indeed, if they knew how to do any research (I know, why bring it up, they are far too stupid to be able to conduct research or know the phonies when they project their opinions as fact) they will find investing public dollars in public education promotes economic growth in communities.Go to : for more information.
http://www.nea.org/home/36328.htm
Oops here’s the link…
Interesting thing, how Spuddypud never even tries to refute me.
Stupid ignorant fuck.
@13
See #2.