Governor Patterson has proposed cutting nearly $88 million over two years in aid to private independent and parochial schools. The funds, specifically, are $44 million a year that is given to private schools to track and report to the state attendance rates throughout the day (apparently NY state counts noses more than once throughout the school day).
The reactions to this announcement have been pointedly negative:
TEACH New York State balked at the announcement, issuing a release headlined: 'Governor to religious and independent school students: Drop dead.'
"Our families cannot absorb any more strain, and the state cannot afford to continue allowing our schools to close--which will only exacerbate the financial crisis lawmakers are desperately trying to solve," said Richard Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference.
Two things. First of all, sure, families are strained financially...but so is the state...and the state gets (most of) its money in taxes from those same families. I've seen this government-must-keep-paying-because-our-families-are-struggling sentiment again and again over the past few weeks. Where do these people think governments get their dollars? Trees? Sure, the federal government can keep printing more cash, but that's not sustainable in the long term. Case and point is yesterday's devaluing of the dollar when the Federal Reserve announced it would print billions in new mint. Let's just accept the fact that everyone, private and public alike, are struggling right now and stop assuming the government will solve all our financial problems. (We also expressed this sentiment in yesterday's Gadfly : if these private and parochial schools don't stand up for themselves, no one else will.)
Second, why the heck is it so expensive to take attendance ? Last time I checked, this was an incredibly simple process. Perhaps the reporting requirements require extra administrative man hours, but let's not act like Patterson's proposal is the end of the world. "Governor to state private and religious schools: Drop dead"? Get a life.
