Farcical, but Not Amusing

STATE LEGISLATURE (NCGA): Goll-lee Moses! We’re spending way too much on education! The public schools are eating up dang near 40% of our whole dadgum budget!

DISTRICTS: We need money for textbooks. We need money for classroom supplies. We need more money to pay for these expensive class-size reductions that y’all are requiring, but haven’t paid for. If you won’t increase our allotments, we’ll have to lay off all of our Art, Music, and PE teachers so we can build more classrooms and hire more K – 3 teachers.

NCGA: Taxpayers will have our heads when they see how much we’re spending on the schools! We’re giving y’all the same amount we gave you 10 years ago—why isn’t that enough? Where’s all that money going, for Pete’s sake? We need more accountability!

TEACHERS: We need higher salaries so that we don’t have to work the night shift at McDonald’s to pay our rent. We’re sick to death of paying for our own classroom supplies and photocopies. We need teaching assistants, guidance counselors, and nurses at every school.

NCGA: We’re paying y’all about $53k a year. Our new website says so! That’s pretty good money if you have a trust fund or if your husband is making big bucks. We provide the districts with plenty of money to pay for school supplies. We think y’all are being cheated out of your supply money. We need more accountability!

EXPERTS: Our research has determined that students who have fallen behind their peers by Grade 3 have only a very small chance of ever catching up. In many cases, they end up leaving school without a high-school diploma. Their future wages are commensurately lower, and so are the taxes they pay. It’s a matter of concern to us that about 44% of NC third-graders aren’t reading at grade level.

NCGA: We hear you. What we need is smaller class sizes and a lot more testing to get these third-graders to perform better on their Reading End-of-Grade tests. These nice lobbyists from IStation have assured us that if we spend another $150M on their electronic diagnostic reading tests in Grade 3, that’ll do the trick. What’s lacking is accountability!

PARENTS: All our kids ever seem to do in school every day is stare at screens and take tests! They hate school now that there’s no more Art, Music, or PE. We want out! Give us money to pay for private school.

NCGA: Private school? Why, sure! How’s $55 million sound? Is that enough?

TAXPAYERS: Do we know how those private schools are spending our tax money? Why is the tuition so high at some schools? What if our money is being embezzled? Are the students at these schools actually learning anything? Private-school students don’t take NC standardized tests, so we have no idea.

NCGA: Don’t worry. Anything that’s private is better than something that’s run by the government. Privatization is the answer to education reform, just like it’s the answer to mental-health reform and prison reform!

DISTRICTS: We need more money to hire reading specialists. We need more money to hire additional teachers now that class sizes are capped so low in grades K through 3. And you’ve basically stopped paying for textbooks. $42 per student for textbooks is a joke!

PARENTS: Our kids think that Bill Clinton is the President because that’s what their Civics textbook says! We want out! Give the charter schools more money!

NCGA: IStation says we just need to add a few more laptops and more tests so we can figure out which Reading curriculum is most effective. Reading specialists would cost too much. But the districts already have plenty of money to hire new K – 3 teachers. Didn’t you read Senator Berger’s press release where he said that we’ve paid for the class size reductions?

TAXPAYERS: Our local and county taxes are going through the roof! Our kids are learning in trailers, without textbooks. We’re just funding a bunch of mumbo-jumbo “social justice” nonsense that the district has added in order to indoctrinate schoolchildren and making kids take tests all day.

NCGA: Hey, how come scores on reading tests haven’t improved after we added all those electronic reading tests? YOU AREN’T DOING THE JOB THAT WE’RE PAYING YOU TO DO!

DISTRICTS: Can we at least get more flexibility to be able to extend the school calendar by a few days so that we can work closely with struggling readers?

NCGA: No way, we can’t give you calendar flexibility! Every school needs to have the same schedule, statewide, except for all the private schools, and the home schools, and the charter schools, and the Restart Schools, and the schools in the Innovative School District, and the year-round schools, and the schools on the Modified Calendar.

PARENTS: The only thing our kids ever do at school is take tests! We want out!