By CHRIS POWELL
What does it mean that, as the Connecticut Mirror reported last week, Connecticut’s birth rate is the ninth lowest in the country and that the state’s public school student population has fallen steadily since 2006, from 578,000 to 498,000, down nearly 14% in 20 years?
Counterintuitively, it means bigger paydays for teachers and school administrators.
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Mere taxpayers might think such a big reduction in students would prompt school systems to economize, but they’d be wrong. For state government, always in thrall to the teacher unions, has enacted a law — the so-called minimum budget requirement — that virtually prohibits school boards from reducing their budgets even as enrollment declines. The law maintains that if a school system spent a certain amount this year, it must spend at least that much every year forever. Economizing is actually illegal.
The premises of the minimum budget requirement law are, first, that spending equals education, and second, that keeping government employees happy is government’s highest objective — that any efficiencies in government should flow not to taxpayers but to government’s own payroll.
Of course these premises are absurd. Connecticut has been increasing per-pupil spending for decades only for student achievement to decline. Higher spending has correlated with lower results.
If state residents were aware of the law’s contempt for them, they might express resentment to their state legislators and the governor and demand an explanation. That would be awkward.
But no one in authority wants people to be aware of the law. The majority party, the Democrats, is controlled by the government employee unions and particularly the teacher unions, and while the Republican minority in the General Assembly dares to complain about taxes generally and specifics like high electric rates, most Republicans are too scared of the teacher unions to criticize the law.
That leaves news organizations to pursue the public interest by publicizing the law and holding legislators and the governor to account for it. But their coverage suggests that most news organizations in Connecticut also think that money equals education, so they see no problem.
Hamden state Rep. Josh Elliott, challenging Governor Lamont in a primary for the Democratic nomination for governor, is the perfect representative of far-left educational ideology.
In an interview the other day with WTNH-TV8 in New Haven, Elliott outlined his platform: “The first thing we’re going to do is make sure that we fix our tax structure — that we have what Massachusetts did, a 4% surcharge on people making $1 million or more.” The extra revenue, Elliott said, would be “sent back to municipalities to make sure that the quality of your education is not dependent on the ZIP code you’re born in.”
That’s the school spending myth in action. Yes, student performance is terrible in certain municipalities, especially the cities, but it’s not because of a lack of spending. It’s because two-thirds or more of the children there are being raised by only one parent. Most lack a father in their lives and thus receive half or less of the financial support, guidance, discipline, and intellectual and physical stimulation children need.
The problem isn’t school spending but poverty and per-pupil parenting. But it can’t be discussed in polite company because, to the lefties, fathers and intact families are a mortal threat to the ever-expanding government that seems to want to make everyone dependent in generational poverty, not self-sufficient.
The other day U.S. Rep. John B. Larson, being challenged by former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin in a primary for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District, accelerated in his race to corner the lefties likely to dominate the vote.
Larson joined two leading national lefties — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar — to introduce legislation to have the federal government finance free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack for all students every day.
Why stop there? Why not also pay teachers to take their neglected and unfed students home with them at night, or at least start inquiring officially into the disintegration of the family?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 