Op-Ed: Bitter education battles can bear fruit

Special to the Covington Reporter

By Rep. Pat Sullivan

September 22, 2009

View article here.

Aristotle once said, “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”

Harvesting that fruit will require some hard work. Especially as our school administrators and teachers try to do more with less.

Numerous school districts around the state faced difficult negotiations this year regarding class sizes and teacher pay but teachers in the Kent School District were the only ones to take to the picket line.

School district strikes often leave scars and bitterness that can affect communities for years. But for the sake of our children, we must move forward and concentrate on how to make our education system even better.

School districts are struggling to provide the programs they need to offer with the resources the state provides them with. The problem became even worse this year when the adopted state budget reduced school funding by $1 billion as part of the effort to bridge a $9 billion budget gap, making budget decisions even more difficult for districts across the state.

Meanwhile, our teachers are on the front lines struggling daily with the impacts of more students in their classrooms and increased pressure to maintain student achievement without commensurate increases in support or compensation.
Elected officials are frequently unwilling to accept blame. As a state legislator, I should be reluctant to point the finger at myself.

But the fact is, our Legislature is not sending the necessary resources to our schools. It’s time for the state to step up to its constitutional obligation to amply fund our schools. And while we’re at it, we need to transform the funding system so parents can better understand what the state is paying for.

Currently the state relies on archaic formulas to allocate funding to school districts. For example, many parents express frustration to me over information on how we fund class sizes. The complex formulas make it extremely difficult to translate what we spend into a true class size number that we can compare with other districts. There’s no way for parents to plainly see what the state is funding and compare it to the spending decisions being made by local leaders.

In addition, the Legislature has continued to ask for greater accountability from our students and our teachers, but has pushed a greater share of the funding burden to locally approved levies.

We are taking steps to fix this. This past session the Legislature took a historic first step with passage of HB 2261, a bill that redefined “basic education” and laid out a ten-year plan for changing everything from how we pay teachers to how we send state money to the districts. We will see the education budgeting process become much more transparent for parents, teachers and taxpayers, making it possible to see exactly what class size the state is paying schools to provide.

The debate in the Legislature over the education reform effort and here during the recent strike has been bitter and difficult. But the fruits such a debate can produce are worth the difficulties. We all need to look to the future and work together for a better educational system. The easy part is coming up with a plan for change, the hard part is making it happen.

I will continue to do all I can to provide school districts the tools they need to do the job we ask them to do. I hope you will too. Let your legislator know supporting our public schools is your top priority. And I welcome your questions, comments and ideas about how lawmakers can help improve our education system.

Rep. Pat Sullivan (D-Covington) is serving his third term as a state representative. He serves as vice-chair of the House Education Appropriations Committee and was prime sponsor of HB 2261.