Hmm. How did we miss this great editorial in the Union Leader.
The Editorial below is dead on correct. Not only is this Estabrook's fantasy it is the fantasy of all NEA and AFT members. Government school employees have an insatiable appetite for money and no amount of money will satisfy these greedy individuals.
The Education Intelligence Agency is a must read for all those who want to follow the antics of the unions who are destroying America's public education system.
Estabrook's fantasy: Schools with limitless resources
Friday, Jun. 1, 2007
SEN. IRIS ESTABROOK, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has crafted a definition of adequate education so comprehensive that it would either bankrupt the state or require the immediate imposition of a sales or income tax. Or both.
Estabrook has amended House Bill 927, which would define an "adequate education," as mandated by the state Supreme Court in last year's Londonderry decision. For "enhanced needs schools," it would mandate experienced teachers, smaller class sizes, full-day kindergarten, "student support services, including special education, guidance, nursing, psychological services and speech/language services," staff training and development and "instructional resources, including library and technology." All of this the state must finance.
It also would remove the modifier "half day" from the bill's kindergarten requirement for all schools.
Having committed the state to a huge spike in school aid, Estabrook then leaves for future legislatures the "determination of the specific resource elements essential to providing the substantive educational content of an adequate education." Oh, and the cost, too.
If these elements are "essential," then why not attach a price tag to them? If we cannot do without them, their cost matters not. But of course, we can do without them. New Hampshire consistently posts among the best test scores in the nation, year after year, without these costly mandates of questionable value.
The Senate Education Committee, if it is wise, will vote down this thinly veiled attempt to create a broadbased tax.
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