Financing Public Education

Song: “Money, money, money, money. Mooooney.”  Come on now, sing it in your head. ;)

Money. It appears to make the world go round and everyone wants more of it, educational institutions included. And so began my week in class…

We discussed financing in education this week, if you hadn’t already guessed. I really hope you have that song stuck in your head now. I typed it out for you so would have to suffer the same torture as me. I cannot get it out of my head. It can play through your head and add a certain ambiance to my blog as you read it.

I really hope that someone who is reading this blog is laughing with me… ahh… to be funny… what a gift. I am jealous of those of you who have been so blessed with the gift of natural humour.

However, in all seriousness financing in education is an extremely important topic. And expensive…

There is a compelling dilemma in our public education system… and that is finding enough money to pay well-educated professionals to do the very important job of educating the youth of our society. In addition, as education becomes an increasingly complex service, it is also becoming more expensive.

People who like to refer to the “good ol’ days” when education wasn’t so complicated or expensive also tend to forget the staggering statistics. A large percentage of students never graduated, post-secondary education was rare, education for students with disabilities was non-existent, and differentiated instruction was some kind of far off incomprehensible idea (What, you mean to say not all children can learn from reading and memorizing a textbook?).  So the people who have a love affair with the “good ol’ days” tend to wear their rose tinted glasses and fail to recognize the progress that is occurring and has occurred in education. But I have a feeling trying to change the “good ol days” people would be about as productive as trying to hammer a nail with a hammer made of styrofoam.

The optimist in me, however, really does believe that despite what the naysayers would have you believe that our education system really is improving. My family could attest to this… On my mother’s side of the family neither of my grandparents attained higher than a grade 8 or 9 education. Only one of my aunts graduated from high school and my mother completed her GED (an accomplishment I am extremely proud of her for). My mom’s 4 other siblings did not graduate from high school. However, all of my cousins have graduated from high school but one. A handful have went on to college or are working on university degrees. I was the first person in my mom’s family to graduate with a university degree. To me that is progress. Exciting progress; our school system is doing something right.

However, despite this progress the public school system is facing new challenges, quite a diverse number challenges really but the one I’d like to focus on is the financial challenges the education system is facing. Income is not increasing at the rate that the cost of education is. This is a big problem. An unsustainable problem.

The public school system is funded from local taxes and provincial funding. Local taxes are collected by the school board via property taxes. This antiquated system has served our country relatively well for a sustained amount of time, but some would argue is a flawed system. Particularly, because of the high amounts of property taxes farmers pay. In addition, every year school boards are scurrying trying to find ways to cut their budgets, but still require tax increases nonetheless. 

Teachers are not paid a crazy amount of money for what they do. Considering their education and high level of responsibility, many might even argue they are underpaid. However, this is a separate discussion… That being said wages take up the largest percentage of a school board budget, and wages are not increasing at the rate that expenditures are. Hmmm another problem…  A complex problem.

In class we all participated in a role playing activity in small groups. We were asked to try and find ways to cut a mock school board budget by 1.2 million dollars. This proved to be an excessively challenging task. And lead to me asking a big question (much to the dismay of my classmates): Why are not looking for alternative sources of revenue?

Trying to always be cutting a budget is not realistic in a world where the cost of everything else in constantly rising. In fact, it is non-sensical. There is always room for efficiency skimming, I would argue. As there are always inefficiencies in any large agency. However, trying to cut a budget every year by millions of dollars when 57% percent of that budget is taken up from wages is simply not sustainable. Either teachers are indeed over paid (which the good ol’ day’ers would have you believe) or we need to find a new way to think about funding education. Increasing taxes year after year is not sustainable either.

In class I asked why we couldn’t be more business minded in our funding approaches to education. I pointed out in our mock activity that we really only needed another $133 per student. I argued that $33 dollars of that could be considered efficiency skimming but asked why we couldn’t find a way to come up with the other $100 per student. This lead to me making several poor suggestions for how we could get the extra money (which I felt embarrassed about even suggesting afterwards but honest, I was just thinking on the spot) because as it turned out I couldn’t think of any good ways to make my idea come to fruition.

This led me to the discussion I had with my fiancé that inspired me to write this blog on a Saturday night. As we drove the hour long drive to my parent’s house he listened to me talk about what I had learned in class… and the questions I had raised… and the bad ideas I had shared. He thought it was a good idea to consider alternative ways to fund schools but agreed with my professor and the flaws she pointed out in my thinking about how such changes could be integrated into a school. And it’s true, they both are right: education needs to be a publically funded endeavour because going to school needs to be an equal opportunity endeavour.

But nonetheless I find myself mulling over how this dilemma could be solved. And on this Saturday night, despite some stimulating conversation with my fiancé, I find myself being incredibly grateful I am not a politician right now trying to find the solution. However, I have great faith that with many minds can come some great ideas.


Side Note:
After writing this post I stumbled across this article, an interesting read. What is the optimum rate of taxation for the greatest rate of return?


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/a-taxing-dilemma-whats-the-optimal-rate-for-the-rich/article2329833/