More on Proposal 5

I gotta say I am a little surprised about people's reaction to Prop 5. Over at Michigan Liberal, matt lays out how he plans on voting on the ballot proposals, including voting down prop 5. In the commits section there are both people for the prop and against it. The part that surprises me, is that I thought funding schools is one of the things that liberals are all about. This has always been a mainstay of the Dems platform, which is why I am just a little confused why Dems would be against this proposal. The main goal of this proposal is to keep funding for school on par with inflation.

Granted this prop isn't the best ever drafted, it has it flaws (such as stating how it will be funded), but it is a huge step in the correct direction. Funding schools isn't just good for schools, it's good for the whole state!

Now don't get me wrong, everybody is entitled to their opinion. I find it very, VERY hard to believe that people would think that this could take funding away from emergency services. That just would not happen, and besides try getting elected after you cut funding for police and fire/rescue operations.

I dunno, this just seems like it is an odd post to be making in response to a post on a self proclaimed liberal site.

For full discloser, my mom is a teacher at an under-funded public school.

Cross posted at Michigan Liberal.

Republicans are still Republicans even at the state level

Michigan House Speaker Craig M. DeRoche recently spoke out about proposal 5 on the Michigan Ballot. He says it is unfair and that it will take money away from his and other townships. He said this proposal is wrong for education because schools would get funding even if they have poor test scores. This guy truly has no idea what the hell he is talking about, the reason most schools have poor test scores is that they are under funded. DeRoche states “I'm for education and I'm for the children." Sure doesn't sound like it. DeRoche, "We could no longer ask about student achievement. They would get the money anyway. We wouldn't be able to ask what we are getting for our tax dollars." What a douche!

http://www.mlive.com/news/sanews/index.ssf?/base/news-20/116195533332120.xml&coll=9

Michigan's Proposal 5

Proposal 5 on the Michigan ballot will increase funding for schools by about $565 million a year. It calls for annual school funding to increase equal to the rate of inflation. It is designed to help not only k-12 schools, but also public universities and even community colleges. Not only that but it states that school districts only have to pay so much into it's employees (not just teachers) pension funds, where the rest would be covered by the state. All in All this sounds like a big step in the correct direction. It would help to equalize the amount of money each school gets per kid (right now some school may only be getting something like $1300 per student while other schools could get $3000).

Right now I am wondering where this so called liberal media is because The Daily Telegram (Adrian's paper), The Detroit Free Press, The Lansing State Journal, The Michigan Catholic Conference, The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and I'm sure a bunch more entities are opposing this bill. Google it, there are all sorts of articles in papers and newsletters against it.

There arguments against it are all over the place, most of them you can tell come from people who have spent very little time in public schools. The biggest argument seems to be that no where in the proposal does it come out and say that this will help education (That must mean it will be BAD for schools right?). Another argument is that the teachers are just trying to pad their accounts. Do any of these people know any teachers? Teachers get paid so little money it's not funny. Get this, they say that since there is no mention of improving test scores it won't make schools better. Oh yeah, they said this bill will take money away from emergency services. And this one just has to make you laugh, they say schools are over funded as they are. Clearly the people making these arguments are education experts to be able to make the case that funding schools is bad for education.

By the way, the school I went to college at, Michigan State University, gets so little money, it can hardly be called a public school. It got lessthan 30% of it's funding through state funds; and that was while I was there 2 years ago, before funding for schools has been cut more.

Here is a link to the Daily Telegram article, I couldn't get any of the other newspapers sites to work.

http://lenconnect.com/articles/2006/10/26/news/news09.txt