In
North Carolina, AP reports that lack of funding has kids sharing out-of
date textbook and teachers and parents buying school supplies…
The
Deep South race to the bottom continues unabated. And for members of
that august right-wing geographical club, the destination of absolute
political zero is looming ever-closer. There are all manner of absolute
zeros – physics, chemistry, PH, Fahrenheit, Celsius and other esoteric
measurements. For our purposes political absolute zero is the lowest
possible temperature at which there appears to be any warmth whatsoever
in radical repugican brain cells.
The two most absolute of the
zeros I’m writing about today are neighbors, North and South Carolina.
Mostly I’ll cover the Tarheel (Tar Heel acceptable as well) state. What
NC and SC most have in common are two putrid wingnut legislatures
that turn out one repulsively radical bill (guns, voter ID, abortion)
after another. They also have a mutual adoration society for destroying
public schools.
The states feature Nikki Haley from South
Carolina and North Carolina’s Pat McCrory, two ghastly lunatic fringe wingnut repugican governors bent on denying the vote to Democrats (and all
others who are not political clones), eviscerating “Obamacare”
marginalizing the gay population, repressing minorities and…well, you
know the drill. As per the absurd Boa Constrictor North Carolina voter
ID law, McCrory was quoted as saying, the new law moves North Carolina
from the “fringe into the mainstream.” Of course the law does exactly
the opposite.
I’m
here to draw your attention to the latest North Carolina legislative
and gubernatorial insult to intelligence and civility in a very
revealing Associated Press story written by Michael Biesecker. The story
is out of Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina and it chronicles the
harm to public education resulting from the actions of the dominant
aforementioned extremists.
Full disclosure: My wife is a Special
Ed teacher in a southern middle school. I’ve written about her
unrelenting dedication and workload before in this space. She works well
over 8 hours a day (and often into the night) during the school year
and slightly less during the summer “break” (highly resented by repugicans). And for what she does she receives an average paycheck.
And she lives in a state where the General Assembly resents even that
stipend and keeps firing her fellow teachers and cutting school funding;
while some aging New York real estate mogul buys the votes of those
legislators who would voucherize and privatize the states education
system.
The AP story is a nice piece of objective journalism (a
rarity these days) that refuses to give McCrory’s lies a pass. The
reporter is Michael Biesecker and he reports that not only do North
Carolina teachers have to ante up their own money for supplies that
state funding shortages don’t cover in their school district, but that
obligation has now been extended to the parents. Yes, mom and pop, in
addition to shoring up public schools (and increasingly private ones)
with their tax dollars are now being hit in the wallet again as they dig
deep to pay for such mundane fare as notebooks, crayons and glue sticks
and deeper for the more expensive stuff including copier paper and
cleaning supplies.
A veteran female Elementary School teacher
(only a quarter of her colleagues are male) is quoted as saying, “We
don’t have the funds we need. It gets kind of frustrating when you hear
about some of the things they’re spending money on down in Raleigh and
we don’t have paper.” She has actually sent a list home with students
identifying supplies needed in her classroom that aren’t covered by the
state. If the parents come up short, the money comes out of her pocket.
Most teachers, at least in red states, have already had to buy at least
some materials for the new school year. My wife’s school has been out of
copy paper for the last three days.
It’s gotten so bad that
North Carolina’s new textbook budget that once stood in excess of $100
million in 2008 has dipped to $24 million this fiscal year. Money for
classroom supplies has been cut nearly in half from $44 million to $24
million. Think about it. In an era when new technologies are exploding,
North Carolina students already come up short by being taught from dated
and often irrelevant textbooks starting in Elementary School.
All
this while the clueless governor claims that the K-12 education budget
for the upcoming school year is “the highest in state history.” Reporter
Biesecker caught McCrory in a whopper after checking with the N.C.
Department of Public Instruction. Appropriations in the 2008-09 school
year were $283 million higher, not even adjusting for inflation. Here’s
another cut that puts the whole educational crisis in perspective. A
High School music teacher told AP that she was accustomed to getting
around $3,000 each year for new sheet music for her classes and student
concerts. This year she’ll make do with $200. Did I mention there are
not enough music textbooks to go around? Everyone has to share. Current
funding, even when increased, simply can’t keep up with rising
enrollment numbers.
Don’t expect any semblance of reason from
North Carolina any time soon. In the 50-member Senate the count favors
the repugicans 33-17. On August 19th Jason Easley wrote of the
resignation of veteran state senator Ellie Kinnaird, who left the senate
after 17 years to devote her time to being an activist countering the
ridiculous state voter ID law. In the House there are 77 repugicans and
43 Democrats out of the 120 member total. Things turned for the worse
in 2011 when repugicans took over the General Assembly. Prior to 2011,
the count was reversed for decades with mostly rural, liberal and low
income voters held sway in both the House and Senate for every biennium
from 1931 to 2011, but one, 1995. North Carolina was unique in that it
didn’t bolt for the repugican cabal after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The margins for
the Democrats were generally huge; In 1975 the numbers were 49-1 and
111-9. Sadly, an opening appeared for redistricting and the results will
continue to be devastating for the state.
Yes, the repugicans
are in charge now. And it’s a turnaround rife with self-serving and
extremists legislation as North Carolina is 1 of 15 states with both a
trifecta plus, meaning the Supreme Court will reliably rule in the repugican’s favor every time and a supermajority. The latter renders a
governors veto irrelevant since there are plenty of repugican votes to
override it as well as plenty of votes to pass legislation that needs
more than a majority count.
Teachers trend Democratic in their
voting patterns. Add their extended families and pals, thoughtful whites
and Democratic-loving minorities vs. rich and heartless white folks
(natural-born repugicans) and if the Democrats show up, they win.
Possibly even in highly manipulated districts.
You’ve seen the political plague that infects a once sensible and delightful state. We need to find a cure at the polls.
Today is National Grandparents Day 
as well as National Hug Your Hound Day
Wherein Agence France Presse learns that "mandatory kill" orders 
