Northwestern Area school superintendent Ryan Bruns is showing South Dakota educators how to properly respond to Governor Kristi Noem’s illegal betrayal of the sales-tax-for-teacher-pay promise of 2016: not with a despondent shrug and retreat to their worksheets, but with public outrage:
Governor Noem recommends a 0.0% increase in funding to education due to the lack of expected revenues at the state level. Three years ago a Blue Ribbon Task Force designed by Governor Daugaard led to legislation that passed an increase in tax revenue (the 1/2 penny sales tax). Part of the revenue would be put toward property tax relief in the agricultural sector and part of it was designed for ongoing funding to education. The legislature passed the law and guaranteed, in the law, a minimum of a 3% increase or equal to inflationary rates. The goal was to reel us out of the depths of last place in the nation (51st) in teacher pay. We managed to bump up a few spots after the first year. Inflation this year is at 2%. And it’s being recommended schools receive 0.0%? The legislature has given no funding to education once already in the previous two legislative sessions. If you or I are driving 78 in a 65-mph zone we know what happens: flashing lights; ticket; fine. And rightfully so because we willfully chose to break the law. Yet the alarm is muted. Educators may cry foul, but we need a little public outrage as well.
…I think we can develop a new campaign: “Funding. We’re on it.” #fundingwereonit [Ryan Bruns, letter to the editor, Pierre Capital Journal, updated 2019.12.08].
Noem’s nepotism and nutty ad buys show that we can’t trust her to budget responsibly. Educators and friends of education, make your case to your legislators that it’s time for the Legislative branch to take charge of this state and follow through on the pressing need to follow the law and fully fund our schools.
There is money for a misguided meth campaign, there is money for skunk traps and there is money for skunk bounties. There is money there to increase school funding if we make it a priority.
Mr. Nemec is correct; however, Governor Noem and the legislature will not make education a priority.
. . . and I would add to Kal Lis — that like past legislatures and governors — no law will force a legislature or governor to make education a priority.
However, I do reserve my judgement of the legislature until session ends: the Governor’s funding often gets increased in this line item. The sausage making of the final budget and adoption by the legislature is more public (and open to constituent influence) than the Governor’s initial budget is.
I appreciate Supt. Bruns willingness to speak up for his school. I hope the citizens of SD will speak up for their schools when the lege meets next month.
Hmm… I wonder if the Legislature and the Governor would comply with the funding formula if we wrote it into the state constitution….
Surely”the funding formula if we wrote it into the state constitution….” was written as sarcasm.
The constitutions, be it state or federal, are treated as a buffet, where the party in power can pick and choose the parts that are most beneficial to them.
Mr. H, your law brain needs to beef up a bit. There is no illegality in the Governor’s budget proposed to the legislatures, it would be illegal for the legislatures to enact it as presented without changing the law about the teachers.
Budget is legal.
Laws don’t take effect until the dark Moon of July.
GOP loves their “school choice.” Here’s what they did with it:
More than 35% of charter schools funded by the federal Charter School Program between 2006 and 2014 either never opened or were shut down, costing taxpayers more than half a billion dollars, according to a new report from an advocacy group that reviewed records of nearly 5,000 schools. The state with the most charter schools that never opened was Michigan, home to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
The report, titled “Still Asleep at the Wheel,” said that 537 “ghost schools” never opened but received a total of more than $45.5 million in federal startup funding. That was more than 11% of all of the schools that received funding from the Charter School Program (CSP), which began giving grants in 1995.
In Michigan, where the billionaire DeVos has been instrumental over several decades in creating a charter school sector, 72 charters that received CSP money never opened, at a total cost of some $7.7 million from 2006 to 2014. California was second, with 61 schools that failed to open but collectively received $8.36 million.
is.gd/etG0H0 (Strib paywall)
WOW!!!!! Grudz and I are on the same page about process. I may need to take a minute here. I feel a strange craving for . . . goat?
Amen to that! Make her a 1 term governor. To not provide for our children’s education by not paying the teachers will create more of a shortage. She can spend millions to an out of state company for her stupid meth message..but then cut education…I’d say that’s a big DER
This is the biggest bunch of bullcrap I have ever seen. Seriously people? Mr. Ryan Bruns is just mad his hometown boy didnt get elected. If anyone wants to know why our education system is failing why not look at ousting Common Core? The biggest scam ever put over on the public. South Dakota teachers are 3rd in the NATION in wage earnings. This victim status these “educators” want us to fall for is nothing but a show and an excuse for Sutton Blue Ribbon Task Force, to feel like they might have done something worthwhile the 8 years that poser was Senator. Open your eyes.
Oh, Cosmo, it’s occasionally fun to see someone uneducated come pretend some interest in a policy discussion….
(1) Senator Sutton was a member of the Blue Ribbon committee, but Senators Deb Soholt and Jacqueline Sly co-chaired that Blue Ribbon panel. Do you consider the Republican chair of that committee, as well as the Republican Governor who created the committee and signed the plan into law, similarly ineffective?
(2) As Secretary Jones reminded the Appropriations Committee Tuesday (you may have understandably missed the fact due to his poorly designed slides), Common Core is gone. You’ll need to find a new default whipping boy.
(3) “3rd in the NATION in wage earnings”? You meant third from last, right? Data, please….
(4) About which hometown boy is Bruns allegedly mad? And if true, how does that anger negate any of the facts Bruns lays out? Is it untrue that the law requires increasing state K-12 funding by an index factor? Is it untrue that Gov. Noem’s budget ignores that law? Is it untrue that Noem is not increasing the target teacher salary?
I can tell, Cosmo, that you have your preferred easy shouting points, but please, try to expand your repertoire and provide some information that is pertinent to the discussion at hand.
The real dope is in Pierre!!!