Letter to the Editor: Where is Education Money Going?

On Monday, February 21, 2011 a group of people organized by the Carteret County Board of Education paraded their support for the Board of Education’s 2011 Budget before the Carteret County Board of Commissioners. The first thing that struck me during the public comments was a statement by, Cathy Neagle, the Chairman of the Board of Education. She said that the Board of Education’s budget would be finalized and ready for presentation to the County Board of Commissioners on or about March 15, 2011. So, I wondered just how did these people who were pleading before the County Commissioners for full funding of the Board of Education’s budget even know what was in the budget that at the time of the meeting was still unfinished, and just what was did they think was so vital in that unfinished budget to the education of the children of Carteret County? Or, perhaps, they were there just to make sure that the money from Carteret County taxpayer’s keeps flowing to the Carteret County Schools regardless of how the money is to be spent?

 

The parade of these concerned people pleading for full funding of an education budget that they hadn’t seen, or that they couldn’t have studied or critically evaluated is so typical of liberals who come to these meetings just to tell elected officials that it is critical for them to spend somebody else’s money so that the children can read, write, and add one plus one, or the sky will surely fall. They said “If you don’t spend more money, there won’t be enough doctors to take care of all the old people in Carteret County,” and “if you don’t spend more money the reputation of our school system will suffer and businesses will not locate in Carteret County,” and “if you cut spending on education, professionals won’t bring their families to live here because our schools will not be good enough.” Then there are the personal anecdotes they conjure up like “accidentally bumping into a group of hard working average citizens at the car-wash who out-of-the-blue start babbling about how “we just aren’t spending enough money on the schools in Carteret County and how they would be more than willing to pay higher taxes to save the children.” Several of these “school-budget cheerleaders” linked the level and quality of education directly to the level of spending, saying that “everyone wants their kids to be able to read and comprehend; we have to spend more to get better results.” One even compared Carteret County schools to foreign countries stating that “American education is now behind that of Estonia and Poland.” Well yeah, but we already outspend Estonia and Poland, and nearly every other nation on earth when it comes to education, and look what we’ve got to show for it! One might logically conclude from that lame comparison that throwing more money at the problem isn’t the solution. The only thing missing at this circus was the County clown who is constantly waxing so in-eloquently in our local paper; I almost missed him.

 

The arguments presented Monday evening by this group were simply fallacious. One only has to look at the Washington, DC voucher program to see that throwing money at education is not the answer. In the DC voucher program, student performance was better, while spending was about half that of the public schools in the surrounding area (that is, until President Obama ended the DC voucher program to the consternation of many DC residents). But closer to home, there is a private school in Carteret County where the per student cost is about half that of the Carteret County Public School’s cost per student, and the private school’s test scores are higher than those of the public school system’s. Why is that?

 

But if one needs even more data to persuade anyone but a liberal that more spending is not better, there are plenty of data available to analyze, although the Carteret County Board of Education doesn’t make it easy to find. The John Locke Foundation’s NC Transparency (http://www.nctransparency.com/) gives the Carteret County Public Schools a grade of “D” for transparency as to how our school tax dollars are being spent. The data is there, you just have to dig for it! It took me two weeks to get the salaries of the Carteret County School’s administrative staff through a County official. You can see it at this URL http://www.crystalcoastteaparty.com/carteret-county-school-administrative-salaries/ But the bottom line is, it is just plain hard to find out how the Carteret County School Board spends your tax dollars.

 

The second thing that struck me during the meeting was was another comment by Cathie Neagle concerning the funding of a capital expense project at East Carteret High School. This project was funded by a bond approved by the Carteret County voters in 2006 according to statements at the meeting. After approval by the voters, the project was managed very well and the cost of the project was significantly less than projected and approved by the voters. They certainly deserve praise for that. But the project then evolved to accommodate the left over money. Whether that is good or bad thing is not the point. The point is, that during the discussion, Ms. Neagle stated that “the objective of the Board of Education was to spend the money;” referring to the money left over following the excellent management of the capital project that had been approved by the voters. Now, it is this mind-set expressed by Ms Naegle that bothers me. As Milton Friedman, noted economist, said “There are four ways to spend money (video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RDMdc5r5z8&feature=related); “one way is when you (the government) spends somebody else’s money (the taxpayer’s) on somebody else (the schools).” Friedman argues that in this case those spending the money don’t much care about how much they spend because it’s not their money, and that they don’t much care about what they get for the money either because it isn’t their money. Sort of sounds like “our objective was to spend the money?”

 

By the time this gets into the paper, the Carteret County Board of Education should have submitted their budget to the County Commissioners. Maybe, just maybe the people who were so supportive of the phantom budget last month will now know what is in it. Then, just maybe, they’ll have a clue as to what the Board plans to spend your money on. In the mean time, you might want to call or write the Carteret County School Board and the Carteret County Board of Commissioners and ask them why the County got a grade of “D” on the NC Transparency web site. Don’t let them tell you they don’t know about it, because several people have already called and asked them why. Tell the School Board and the Commissioners you’d like to see the County get a grade of “A.” Ask them to post all of their budget information on-line so the public can easily access it, and see where the money is going. After all, it’s your money they are spending.

 

by Kenneth Lang

March 11, 2011