Governor Dennis Daugaard's budget address put Doug Wiken to sleep. I made it through the replay, but it didn't contain a lot of big waker-uppers. That's good and bad. We heard no jarring whackings of the meat ax that decimated the FY2012 budget, but we heard no stirring new initiatives to help us recover from those cuts. The Governor led off by insisting that sustaining those cuts is a necessity. Welcome to the new norm.
In K-12 education (the field that puts bread on my table... and makes it possible for everyone else to do the same), Governor Daugaard's FY2013 budget recommendations represent a return to the status quo... of 2008. Public schools will get an increase in line with the funding formula that went out the window during the last two sessions, but they'll still be operating with less state aid per pupil than they got four years ago.
What does that mean for your local school district? If your school board managed to balance its budget without resorting to an opt-out or burning up reserves, then you're in reasonably good shape. You can at least expect that, barring major new expenses, your school won't have to cut teachers or programs next year.
But if your school district did have to opt out or spend reserves to keep the doors open this year (and many did), then you've got trouble. The 2.3% increase in state aid will likely be eaten up by inflation, or as is my case in Spearfish, increased health insurance premiums. The governor's proposal helps schools tread water, not climb up onto dry land.
Governor Daugaard is promising $8.4 million in one-time money to add another 1.5% to the state's spending on K-12 education. The Governor's "Investing in Teaching" initiative will fund for the following training:
- training for Common Core Standards for every teacher; dollars go right to teachers taking training and teachers conducting training
- training for administrators on Common Core and teacher evaluation methods
- intensive training for science and math teachers
- training for guidance counselors to help kids make wise choices, planfully choose workforce/college plans
Notice that top two items, training in the Common Core Standards (and Sibby, don't start with the globalist conspiracy nuttiness), doesn't really add value in the classroom. For the most part, Common Core Standards don't bring new knowledge or skills to your kids. Your K-12 teachers are already giving your kids a pretty good education in teachers' fields of expertise. Training in Common Core Standards is mostly about learning to recategorize that expertise and curriculum in terms of the new standards.
Now if Governor Daugaard is handing out cash, I'll happily spend a week or two stuck in a classroom over the summer. Sign me up now! But notice that this one-time money isn't about raising teacher pay for a job well done. Governor Daugaard apparently still believes our perennially last-in-the-nation teacher pay is just fine. Teachers get all they deserve. If they want more, they have to jump through new hoops... hoops which, alas, too rarely contribute to direct benefits for students.
Governor Daugaard did not provide details, but it seems a fair guess that his guidance counselor training will focus on getting them to re-orient more students toward vocational training. That might well benefit a number of students and save them unnecessary student debt.
Beyond that, the budget recommendations don't seem to offer much in terms of new, bold initiatives or improvement in K-12 education. We're not making major new investments in better classroom outcomes. We're simply stopping the major bleeding and maintaining a new, lower status quo.
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Enjoy Governor Daugaard's FY2013 Budget Address (plus reaction and commentary afterward) on SDPB and in joyfully embeddable YouTube color:
Can we please just take the 1.5% and give it to the districts? Come on Daugaard Republicans, give local government control. You'll feel better about yourselves, I promise.
Cory, why do you call the truth about the New Age Theocarcy "nutty"? For analysis in regard to the Medicaid program, Cory has a link to my web site (Sibby Online) where I show that Daugaard's Medicaid budget is $97 million more than what was spent in the year just ended June 30, 2011. So why would we add another $90 million with the proposed 25% sales tax increase? With federal match, the South Dakota Medicaid budget would increase another $250 million!
I see the chicken tyrants over at the SDWC are willing to attack those who are banned from the site and can't defent themselves. Back in the days when conservatives were winning for the SDGOP, the SDGOP went after the Argus leader for being in bed with Democrats. Now it looks the the SDGOP Establishment has made up with the Argus Leader and are having a hot love affair.
http://dakotawarcollege.com/archives/23501
Bill Fleming,
Is that you over at the SDWC with the GOP feathers wearing the "BF" t-shirt?
Yes, Sibby, that's me.
Thought you enjoyed the company of GOP tyrants. How does it go, Birds of a Feather....
"You can at least expect that, barring major new expenses, your school won’t have to cut teachers or programs next year."
Like French and Football?
Steve,
What is it that schools are supposed to do?
You made clear on the earlier thread that you don't want them to teach students how to think critically or question pronouncements given without warrant. You don't want them to learn a foreign language; apparently they are to remain ignorant of the larger world.
I can't point to the specific thread off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure that you don't want them to learn any science that deals with evolution or climate change.
I won't even try to guess what you want history and literature classes to be like.
I'm pretty sure that all of the math necessary for your view of "the common good" can be done on a calculator. You also want don't want students to do extra-curriculars.
If we follow your paradigm for education, public schools will be destroyed. Perhaps that's what you want.
The thing that saddens me most is that there will be more parents upset about the loss of extra-curricular athletics than the loss of anything else.
"What is it that schools are supposed to do? "
Prioritize and then apply available resources.
"The thing that saddens me most is that there will be more parents upset about the loss of extra-curricular athletics than the loss of anything else."
Agreed LK, parents expect others to pay for their children's entertainment. Most things are based on coveting nowadays.
I'm about to go watch my daughter play basketball in Ramona tonight. I'm going to hang out with my family and friends and enjoy the game. Everyone is welcome to join us.
Ramona has not cut basketball yet?
LK, bless you. A well-rounded education is worth paying for.
ORR rocks at basketball.
"A well-rounded education is worth paying for."
So why is secret societies excluded? Your "well-rounded" is not the same as my 'well-ronded". Where are the Bible studies? Why do I have to pay for your New Age Theocracy?
...because, Steve, you already have wealthy institutions with skilled practitioners present in every community providing Bible studies free of charge to anyone who is interested. And you wouldn't want the state to step in and muck up religion with its indoctrination on the history and meaning of the Bible, would you?
Since much of Western Literature, History and Culture is based on the Bible, it makes sense educationally to be familiar with the stories and themes in it.
What you believe about it on a personal level is a matter of faith. I can guarantee that the Truth is far different that any of us can imagine: more simple yet more complex.
"Steve, you already have wealthy institutions with skilled practitioners present in every community providing Bible studies free of charge to anyone who is interested."
Only to have the so-called free and mandatory public education system to undo the creation truth with evolution myths. Shall we pass a law that says you have to go to church, Mr. New Age Theocrat? And if you want to go to public school, you still have to pay the church tax?
Why yes, I do pay a church tax. We allow churches to take property off the tax rolls, increasing the tax burden in individual homeowners, including non-churchgoing homeowners.
If public school mandates the undoing of your particular creation myth, it's obviously doing a rotten job of it. What are you afraid of? Christianity seems pretty resilient. I'm in my eleventh year of teaching in a public high school classroom, and I can't think of a single student who has fallen away from the church because of my secular humanist ministrations.
Of course, nothing in Governor Daugaard's budget recommendations deals with any of these questions. Nothing we've heard so far suggests that we are planning to revolutionize or notably improve our actual teaching. And nothing suggests that it's even on the governor's radar that we need to improve our position in the market for paying teachers a competitive wage for the work they do building the foundation for everything else that citizens do in society.
And Michael, our history classes already can cover that Christian influence, if we have good history teachers. Of course, our culture was deeply influenced by those pagan Greeks, so we'd better include some strong pagan Greek studies. Our culture was also deeply influenced by the Muslims, who nicely preserved and expanded much of our learning for several hundred years while we ran around barbarizing during the Dark Ages, plus they have a significant influence on our current politics, so we'd better include some Muslim studies....
Do you teach about the terror of the French Revolution in French class?
Good grief, Michael: It's French 1 and 2. We're conjugating verbs.