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GOP Wrecks High School Vo-Tech; Daugaard Thinks 12 One-Time Handouts Compensate

Mr. Larson properly hammers Governor Dennis Daugaard for creating the crisis in career and technical education. Larson points to a campaign video by the Governor on the topic, the first sentence of which explains the whole problem:

"South Dakota needs to spend time and effort preparing its young people for the world of work," says Governor Daugaard. Time, effort, but no mention of money... at least not of the money he took away from the schools:

As school districts have struggled with budget constraints, one means that they've used to manage their expenses is to reduce some of the electives that our students have available in high school, and some of these electives unfortunately are career and technical education opportunities, those welding classes, those ag classes, those health ed and engineering classes that give students elective course opportunities that can also be explorations of potential careers. And it costs too much money to have every one of these high schools offer these career opportunities [Dennis Daugaard, campaign video, 2014.05.09].

That's odd: maybe not every one, but a lot more of these high schools offered these career opportunities, programs that local school boards decided were as vital for their students as English, math, science, and history, before the Janklow-Rounds-Daugaard regime applied twenty years of budget pressure to strangle the schools. "It costs too much" is not an objective statement of fact; it is a value judgment in which Bill Janklow, Mike Rounds, and Dennis Daugaard have said, "We don't want to spend what it takes to provide every student with good in-house career and technical education."

But in rides Dennis to the rescue, like the mining companies contaminating the water supply, then rolling in to town with trucks of bottled water:

So it made sense to me that we try to regionalize the offerings and find a high school in every region of the state that could create a very good career and technical education package of classes and offer it not just to that school district but to all surrounding school districts as well.

So just last February the state utilized Future Funds to grant over $8 million in grants to a whole array of school districts around every region of the state to create programs and to reinvigorate programs in electronics, in machining, in the building trades, in the health care industry, in accounting [Daugaard, 2014.05.09].

Let me remind the Governor what is wrong with that statement:

  1. Future Funds: in other words, one-time money. When Democrats ask the Governor to use surpluses (surpli!) from other budget lines to give education a boost, he insists that we can't give schools false hope by handing them one-time money. But when he wants to make up for damage his budget cuts caused, he has no problem taking money from his economic development slush fund and dropping it, one time, on the school districts.
  2. The governors' budget cuts have replaced a first-class vocational education system with a second-class vocational education system. Twelve favored schools get in-house technical education. Students in surrounding school districts get to take those classes, but only if they rearrange their schedule to bus over to those tech-ed centers or take the classes online. In either situation, the remote students get less of an education. It's better than nothing, but if I'm a parent with a practical choice of school districts, I send my child to the school that offers more on-site opportunities.
  3. Governor Daugaard is taking steps to make up for the damage he did to career and technical education, but as Mr. Larson points out, schools have cut much more than vocational classes to survive 20 years of gubernatorial miserliness:

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!! Those extensive "budget constraints" were caused by his budget! He is the one that has de-invested in education. I am blessed to be in a district that offers great technical/career education programs which include agriculture, wood technical, art programs, health programs; along with some great teachers in foreign languages, math, chemistry, English, and social studies. We made it through the cuts beat up, but thanks to some wonderful administrators and school board members we got through it but had to close an elementary school to do so.

Be honest with the people Governor. You see students as a tool for your business friends, and beyond that you would rather not have to deal with "those" teacher people [Michael Larson, "Daugaard Creates Career and Tech Crisis and Then Campaigns on It," Taking a Left Turn in South Dakota, 2014.05.23].

If Dennis Daugaard really wanted to do education a favor, he wouldn't have waited until re-election year to dole out one-time favors to a handful of lucky school districts for one corporate-favored slice of the curriculum. He'd have put forward the time, effort, and money to fund quality education in all subjects and all schools in 2011.

19 Comments

  1. owen reitzel 2014.05.24

    Exactly! First the Governor talks about balancing the budget but doesn't say he did it on the backs of education.
    He didn't "invest" in education, he hurt it. He'll use the excuse that he had to fix the structural l deficit. On the backs of education??? BS.
    Plus who created this "structural deficit?" Yup Marion Michael Rounds.
    So what it comes to South Dakota can't afford to have either one representing the people of South Dakota.

  2. larry kurtz 2014.05.24

    but ignore the apostrophe....

  3. James Srstka 2014.05.24

    There always seems to be enough money to ship a football team 400 miles to get it's butt kicked in a playoff game, at the cost of education and the arts.

  4. larry kurtz 2014.05.24

    Not to mention a $65 million stadium built by campaign contributors.

  5. Tim 2014.05.24

    Sad to say, the republican majority in SD will continue to vote against what's best for them and their kids, why? The old saying is, "You get what you vote for." What pisses me off, I get what they vote for too. I don't know what it will take to get them to wake up and smell the coffee.

  6. Shirley Harrington-Moore 2014.05.24

    Tim, start with a different governor. The primary is June 3. You can vote early (vote Blue, Vote DEM, VOTE JOE) at your local county auditor's office.

  7. JeniW 2014.05.24

    Tim, there are those who love the odor of coffee (even if what they are smelling is pure BS,) so don't count on anything changing.

  8. Tim 2014.05.24

    Shirley, my vote in the general will go to whoever is running against Daugaard, what his four years has done to this state and the people that live here is a travesty. I hope it is Joe, but as I have stated here before, I once again procrastinated on changing my voting preference, and am relegated to repub sabotage in the primary. Even if Joe beats Daugaard, if voters in this state don't flush the Pierre toilet, then a dem gov with that legislature won't get much done. Kind of like the president and the rightwing nut jobs running the house on the national level.

  9. Tim 2014.05.24

    Jeni, I love the smell of coffee in the morning, I found some that makes the whole house smell like a huge chocolate bar every morning, stuff is great. The stuff republicans are brewing reminds me more of the smell that comes from my cats litter box.

  10. JeniW 2014.05.24

    Tim, I dislike the odor of coffee; I can barely stand being in a coffee shop. I am with you about the litter box odor because I have two cats (although the kind of litter I purchase does well with controlling the odor.)

  11. Joan Brown 2014.05.24

    I like the smell of coffee, but can't stand the taste. I'm a diet Pepsi/Dew drinker.

  12. caheidelberger Post author | 2014.05.25

    You guys and your metaphors! Notice that Daugaard's education policy seems to have no interest in teaching people how to grapple with tough issues via literary devices. He (like Common Core backers) just wants to train everyone to read technical manuals, go to work, and help someone else make money.

  13. Rick 2014.05.25

    Republican governors in this state want us to be amazed by what else they can do with less money. After doing this for a while they ask why we keep throwing money at it. A completely ludicrous and corrupt view of governing.

    Why not have a Governor who just wants us to be amazed by doing more?

  14. Les 2014.05.25

    ""Kind of like the president and the rightwing nut jobs running the house on the national level.""""""""Sounds like you're speaking of Clinton's last days when he signed away our financial future with the repeal of G/L.

  15. barry freed 2014.05.26

    When I went after my first Patent, a few years after graduating from High School, I used drafting and building skills learned in 7th, 8th, and 9th Grade Drafting and Metal Shop classes. I used welding and lathe skills learned in 10th Grade Metal Shop to build my series of prototypes. My written part came from copying a successful Patent Application I found at the SDSM&T and whiting out their info. I didn't need to hire anybody to work on my Invention or Patent. I credit Teachers and my Parents with encouraging me to think as well as learn. Thinking of you, Purp!
    Funny, the School required boys only, take Shop while they made girls take Home Economics. I had friends endure the ridicule of taking Home Ec classes because they got to eat what they made. There were no girls in Drafting or Shop. As if the skills were unique and necessary to each sex.
    Now, they believe nobody needs those Shop classes as an elective, but must instead pay for them.

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