Recently the Austin Texas based Equity Center released a report entitled “Money Does Matter.” The study details the financial difficulty being experienced presently by the public school system.
The Equity Center “was founded in 1982 by 55 school districts and now represents more than 650 of the state’s 1,025 districts. It is the only education organization in Texas that exclusively represents the interests of children in school districts that are habitually underfunded by the Texas school finance system. Fair treatment of Texas children and taxpayers is the principal goal of the Equity Center.”
The Equity Center states in its overview that, “From our founding days, Texans have recognized that providing free universal education for our children is a major role of state government.” Therein lies the rub and the crux of the problem.
Almost from the outset Texas was a slave state and in many ways still is. Today’s slaveholders are simply not identified or called such---that would understandably be more than even the majority population could get away with and for minorities to swallow.
Just today it is reported that “Dozens of wealthy Texas school districts held onto more than $40 million in tax dollars that should have gone to poorer districts under the state's so-called "Robin Hood" law until the state demanded they pay up this year, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.”
It should be fairly obvious that there is at best “Illusions of Justice” and tenable and conditioned freedom for some but certainly not for all across the entire width and breadth of the South.
From my life long studies and experience in and with social-science, political-science, the much misnamed or mislabeled “politics” and of course history I recognize just how unpopular and offensive this indictment is to those of the majority population of Texas Red and the other Southern states. But that’s only because the picture as seen is what we’ve been told we are seeing and not necessarily what is. Perhaps if we risked offending a few more people we would see things for what they are rather than what we would have them and get about the task of fixing them.
There is a most illustrative of illustrations I first encountered in Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Efficient People” which best makes the point.
In this sketch some individuals see an old woman and others a young one. The old woman and the young woman exist at once. Which one we see is a matter of perspective but without changing one brush stroke, one pixel, without altering any part of it in even the slightest way there it is---both existing at once.
Some people can see only the young woman others only the old---they are fixated, rigid, inflexible. Others can see both but are fairly indifferent and largely unaffected by it.
Unfortunately, for the children of Texas Red and the rest of the width and breadth of the South whose collective fates and eventually that of this republic hang in the balance the unfair and unequal apartheid public education system seems the choice of public policy by the majority population. That is one unmendable misfortune that cannot be survived without creating an enormous subclass of largely illiterate and unskilled citizens. Neither is good for what is billed as a “democracy.”
If there is a reason that our federal representatives (government) has to “overreach” it is this type of condition. Federal level representatives had to step in to provide equal protection under the law through the Civil Rights Act time and again or else the majority population would have just gone on abusing, beating and lynching minorities. Short of what compassionate, conservative religiosities call the government’s “over-reach” it is unlikely the present apartheid public education system will change anytime soon or late.
Southern states have created and entrenched an apartheid public education system. Given the history and legacy of slavery in the South that should not surprise anyone. The surprise is that states in general and Southern states in particular were ever entrusted with such an important task. It is a task that rises to the level of national security. The South has paid little more than lip service to Brown vs. Board of Education. If this was an incorrect assessment we wouldn’t have the Equity Center’s report, a per student $9,000.00 gap between poor and rich school districts, or our apartheid public education system which is a holdover from the days of slavery.
Individuals like this state’s governor know no shame. Instead of working to change the state’s apartheid public education system as well as to deal with its $18 to 25 million dollar deficit he’s out hawking his book. That’s just sad for the children of this state.
From Texas Red: a cratered landscape of prisons, deplorable apartheid public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority population intent on keeping it that way…
Hasta Siempre,
Hasta Siempre,
Wealthy Texas school districts kept millions
HALLSVILLE, Texas — Dozens of wealthy Texas school districts held onto more than $40 million in tax dollars that should have gone to poorer districts under the state's so-called "Robin Hood" law until the state demanded they pay up this year, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/7294682.html
Take no prisoners, shoot the wounded and eat the dead…..
My buds usually say to this type of discovery, “No shit Sherlock?”
The Austin-based advocacy firm The Equity Center recently released a report called “Money Does Matter” detailing the trouble with public school finance in the current educational climate.
Two San Antonio superintendents — Robert J. Duron with SAISD and Robert Jaklich with Harlandale ISD — contributed to the project and said they both understand why unequal funding is becoming more and more of a problem.
“It costs $8 million a month to run the district,” he said. “Harlandale is 22nd from the bottom as far as property wealth, so our funding is very low.”
http://www.mysanantonio.com/community/equity_center_releases_ominous_finance_report_106975173.html
The Equity Center recently released a report called “Money Does Matter”
http://www.equitycenter.org/moneymatters/Money%20Matters%20Publication.Sept%202010.pdf
http://www.equitycenter.org/moneymatters/Money%20Matters%20Publication.Sept%202010.pdf
Illusions of Justice
History of Slavery in Texas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Texas
Young Woman or Old Woman
"a new breed of Southern demagogues, intolerant and and vengeful...."
http://www.examiner.com/public-policy-in-san-antonio/a-new-breed-of-southern-demagogues-intolerant-and-and-vengeful
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
http://www.amazon.com/Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/0671708635
Public Policy & Elections 2010 Post-election, apartheid America...still red after all these years....
The prison-industrial complex, aparatheid public education system, racism and Elections 2010
Institutionalized racism at the center of public education's problems
http://www.examiner.com/public-policy-in-san-antonio/institutionalized-racism-at-the-center-of-public-
education-s-problems
Institutionalized racism at the center of public education's problems (part 2)
Institutionalized racism at the center of public education's problems (part 3)
Institutionalized racism at the center of public education's problems (part 4)
Three of four inmates in America's prison-industrial complex are people of color
Texas Red: government, big business, organized religion and public policy
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