Worry about improving the product, not budget cuts

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s new leather gold-embossed governor’s chair was hardly sat on before a reporter felt he had to ask him if he thought it appropriate to have such a fancy chair in such hard times.

The governor mumbled politely that he needed a chair and this is the one they gave him. Give him a few more weeks in that chair and he probably won’t be so polite.

Once the chair was out of the way on the morning after the Inaugural Ball, it didn’t take long for the special interests to begin lusting after their share of a deficit-haunted budget. First up was the education lobby — although it should be noted the public employees unions had jumped the gun with a press release before the inauguration reminding Malloy who put him there.

But the education lobby beat out the rest of the special interest forces on the first working day of the new administration by calling on the governor and Legislature to do something they surely shouldn’t do:

“Our new governor and legislators need to make public education the No. 1 priority in the state,†said Robert Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.

Make education the first priority? Hadn’t he noticed that the state’s $3.5 billion deficit, due to reach probably $5 billion once truth in accounting becomes the rule, may need some attention? And what about jobs, especially for the not-very-well-prepared young people being turned out by these schools? But I guess making education the No. 3 priority isn’t all that stirring.

The education crowd has every right to be worried. In the past two years, the state has been playing the smoke and mirrors game with public education, cutting state aid by 14 percent, then making up for it by using federal stimulus funds that are now gone. That was folly in the view of the new governor, who has to find a way to replace at least part of the federal money.

The schools do remain protected by what is known as the minimum budget requirement, which guarantees each school system a budget at least as large as the previous year’s. But another potent special interest, the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, wants the Legislature to abolish the requirement because it claims it prohibits cities and towns from making sensible budget cuts. And so, the scene is set for a battle of the special interests, the schools versus the cities and towns they live in.

Not surprisingly, the education lobby has tried to argue there is nothing left to cut but ultimately admitted we aren’t quite facing the end of public education as we know it.

“In order to meet a cut of this magnitude we will have to eliminate or pare down foreign language, physical education, health, sports and after-school activities and increase class size,†said the president of the school boards association, Don Blevins.

That means schools, despite some cuts, will still be teaching kids most of what they have always taught them, with the exception, perhaps, of what Blevins called “foreign language,†which our public schools have never taught very well anyway. Consider how many Americans speak a second language as compared with Europeans and Asians.

And, if you look at a shocking report issued just before election day, Connecticut schools aren’t doing a very good job teaching the basics, either. Little attention was paid in late October when a panel chaired by the commissioners of education and higher education announced that more than two-thirds of the students at the state universities and community colleges are not capable of taking college-level courses in math or English.

The report said a frightening 72 percent of incoming students, products of those public schools alarmed at cutting sports, after-school activities and foreign languages, need remedial courses in math or English or both. That is a kind way of saying 72 percent of these students should never have been allowed to graduate from high school. 

It is also a way of suggesting that the education lobby should appreciate funding isn’t its biggest problem; improving the product is.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.