Some Bills Make Sense - Some Don't

As you may know by now, the Republicans have put in state of Texas in a serious financial bind. According to the state comptroller, the state faces a budget shortfall for the next biennium of at least $27 billion. The problem could be handled easily by broadening the sales tax base (or instituting an income tax for those making six figure incomes or more), tapping the state's "rainy day fund" (which is projected to be about $9.4 billion), and making some minor cuts to state agencies.

But that would make sense, and since Texas is run by Republicans, they can't do anything that makes sense. The Republican legislature (along with the Republican governor) has decided that taxes can't be raised and the "rainy day fund" can't be used (even though it has never rained harder - economically speaking). They want to make up the entire shortfall (and a little more) by just cutting state services.

One of the areas scheduled to take the biggest cut is education. Texas already trails all other states in the per student funding the state provides for education, not to mention leading the nation in the amount of high school drop-outs. But that doesn't seem to matter to the Republican legislators. They are proposing cutting billions of dollars from education funding -- enough cutting to cost the jobs of 100,000 teachers and school employees.

The Democrats are vastly outnumbered in the legislature (about 2 to 1 in the House) and know there is little to do to save Texas schools from the Republican onslaught. But State Rep. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth) has come up with a good way to save some jobs in the schools. She has proposed a bill to reduce the base electricity rate for school districts by 20%.

This could save schools a ton of money and save some jobs (the Fort Worth schools alone would save about $3.2 million). This bill makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider that Texas colleges already receive this same discounted price. Why shouldn't elementary, middle schools and high schools pay the same discounted rate as the colleges?

A Republican legislator has also come up with a way to "save jobs" in education. State Sen. Florence Shapiro (R-Plano) has filed a bill that she says will give the schools some cost-saving measures. The main two things her bill would do is (1) allow schools to increase class sizes, and (2) allow superintendents to "furlough" teachers.

Class sizes were restricted a few years ago because it was recognized that smaller classes allow teachers to spend more time with each student and help those students to be successful in school. Increasing the class sizes will negatively affect the education of students (and very probably increase Texas' already horrendous drop-out rate of nearly 30%). It's just a very bad idea.

The "furlough" of teachers is an equally bad idea. While it's true that the teacher wouldn't have to be paid for that day, who's going to teach their class that day? Are you going to have to pay a substitute? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the furlough? The only way the furlough idea could work is to close the school for the day, and then the school would be in violation of state law which mandates the number of school days. And if the number of mandated school days are reduced by the state, then the quality of a student's education is once again affected.

While West's bill would save schools some money without affecting the quality of education, Shapiro's bill would save money by directly and negatively affecting student education. It just goes to show that not all bills are equal. Some make sense and some don't.