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Cutting off the nose to spite the face ...

The Spartanburg Herald had a great editorial this morning. The op-ed piece refers to an AP article reported yesterday (click here to read) regarding $143 million available to South Carolina to protect teacher jobs. The amount of the money that would be allocated to Oconee County is approximately $2 million that could be used for teacher salaries in 2011-12.

Go after money for schools

If other states are getting federal money for schools, SC needs to get its share

Spartanburg Herald Journal Editorial

Published: Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 3:15 a.m.

South Carolina lawmakers, education officials and the state’s congressional delegation should devise a way to get Palmetto State schools the money other states are getting to help them through a difficult budget year.

Other states got the federal bailout money, but because of a change in the federal rule, South Carolina was disqualified because the state reduced spending on higher education. As a result, the state’s schools lost $143 million.

Many of the members of the state’s congressional delegation have opposed federal bailouts for good reasons. The national government is already too deep in debt and doesn’t need to be borrowing more money to give to anyone. But, as with other federal bailouts, if the money is going to states, South Carolina needs its fair share.

It simply makes no sense to refuse federal money. When the national government takes on debt, it will require South Carolinians to help pay off that debt. We will be making payments on this money through our taxes for decades. Since we will be paying for it, we should see some of the benefit from it. So there should be no unwillingness to seek the money.

And there should be no denial that South Carolina schools could use the money. An aide to incoming state Superintendent of Education Mick Zais was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that schools have ample reserve funds and that Zais would not seek the money if any federal strings were attached.

The idea that schools have enough money would sound strange to the teachers who have been laid off or didn’t get their contracts renewed. It would seem strange to the students attending larger classes due to those reductions. South Carolina schools have cut more than 3,600 teaching positions in the past two school years.

And more cuts are likely this year. The state faces a tremendously difficult budget year. Lawmakers will have to cut $800 million to $1 billion, almost 20 percent, from the state’s budget. Education is a huge portion of the budget, which means school budgets are likely to be cut again.

That $143 million in federal money would help schools bridge a terrible budget year. That money would mean real differences in the education our children receive. It could mean the difference between getting the individual attention a child needs from a teacher and being in a class that is so large the teacher has no time to give students one-on-one time.

With that much at stake, the state can’t afford partisan political stances declaring that we won’t take federal bailout money or unrealistic claims that schools have all the money they need. The state’s leaders need to work together to foster action in Washington that will let that money come here.

A great quote to ponder as we get closer to the challenges of 2011 …

“No question is more pressing than this: Can we master Fate? As far as I know, that query is still answered negatively by those in sequestered parts of the world. The mountains may rise and sink, the stars may shift, the ocean may recede farther from its ancient shores, but they accept Fate.

“Continents have been opened and schools have been established on the principle that education is the common property of all. Our civilization is winged with steam and electricity. Despite tragic blunders and enslavements, this endeavor has brought genuine well-being to the largest number of people in the history of economic administration. Thus has grown the great philosophy of making circumstances. It is fostered the noblest individuality, and the finest sensibilities. Out of this expanded and enriched human nature has come the deliverance of those whose lives Fate seemed to have hopelessly wrecked.”

~ Helen Keller, March 1938