Education
Developing and funding a quality educational system should be the top priority of our State government.
When developing our budget, education programs should be our first priority. Many years ago the state adopted a law known as Quality Basic Education “QBE”. Under this law the state is required to provide certain funding to each local school district based on a formula which includes the number of students to be educated by each local system. For many years the state has failed to provide the local school districts with the money required to come from the State government under the current funding formula. In 2010, the General Assembly underfunded this portion of the Education budget by more than $500,000,000.00.
While failing to fully fund its obligation to the local school districts, the legislature has passed legislation which limited the control of local school boards over how their resources are used and required the use of local tax dollars to fund programs over which the local school boards have no control.
We must recognize that good teachers are our most important asset in developing a quality educational system. We must stop making policies at the State level and imposing them on the classroom teacher. Instead we should involve the teachers in policy decisions and let them teach us how to educate the students and involve the parents in their children’s education. Finding and keeping good teachers and involving these teachers in developing curriculum and testing policies should be a high priority of our educational system.
During the past few years, the Republican leadership at the state level has taken more and more authority away from the local school districts and transferred it to the state level while failing to fully fund the education formulas already established by law. I believe these policies should be reversed. I support the State fully funding its share of the educational programs while allowing local control of educational programs.