Is Our Children Gonna Learn?

The Campaign for Fiscal equity (CFE), which won a landmark ruling in New York State for high-need school districts, testified to the legislature against Governor Paterson's plan to cut education funding. Additionally, CFE's Executive Director Geri Palast released this statement:

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity believes the Governor’s proposal to cut $2.5 billion from New York’s classrooms is bad economics. In addition to a budget deficit, there is an education deficit that by law and long term economics must be one of the state’s top priorities. The Legislature must construct a budget based on this comprehensive view of the deficit. New York’s public school children have lived with the education deficit for over 15 years as documented in the CFE litigation. It severely imperils the ability of our children to become skilled and productive contributors to our society. The 2007 Education Budget and Reform Act provided the four year timeline and fnancial commitment to address this education deficit.

While CFE recognizes that we face tough budget challenges, the Legislature must not tolerate changes to the funding baseline set last year, 2008-2009, and must take extraordinary steps to make good on this year’s commitment despite the economic downturn. The proposed federal stimulus prioritizes education.

Those funds must be taken into account along with additional deficit reduction funds that could come from increasing the personal income tax on the wealthiest New Yorkers. We simply cannot afford to increase the education deficit. It will put us back where we started and undermine New York’s capacity to provide its students with their constitutionally mandated sound basic educations. Compliance with this constitutional mandate is a legal, economic and moral necessity. This should be the bottom-line factor in all budget decisions.

The Albany Project puts a face on all this:

In Greece, NY, the School District is preparing to lay off up to 100 people.

Rochester schools are facing the firing of up to 500 staff.

Buffalo School Superintendent James Williams is being forced to dip into a $15 million dollar surplus to ease a $52 million dollar cut in state aid.

In the first of three meetings planned with residents, Williams urged parents to appeal to local state legislators to blunt the blow to school funding, which he said would be catastrophic. "If you [translated] that into people, you're talking about 900 to 1,000 [jobs]. You'd dismantle the system.

There's no way we could operate that way," Williams told local news reporters before the start of the meeting with about 250 parents in Southside Elementary School.

Williams noted that since 2005, the district has shed 1,000 jobs through attrition.

Meanwhile, resistance continues to adjusting New York's income tax rates, so that the haves contribute something more resembling their fair share. And politicians quietly tiptoe around the topic.

Well, is our children learning?

On Halloween, 1936, President Roosevelt gave a campaign speech at Madison Square Garden. The take-away quote was this:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace -- business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred.

FDR's description is as true today as it was more than 72 years ago. It appears that our Governor and Legislature, on the other hand, welcome their support.