Just when you thought they coudn’t be stupider….

The Democrat State legislature and Governor have enacted a budget that apparently denies local school districts to set their staffing levels based on financial conditions and enrollment. This is being heralded as good public policy?

Republicans have been accused of having a “religious” opposition to tax extensions. Is the Democrats opposition to pension reform and government employee cost structure reform not “religiously fanatical” in its own right?

Republicans in Sacramento, in a small way, set us up for this. We’ve been drinking the “preserve education funding” Kool Aid for 20 years, going along with massive increases in spending and staffing, with no appreciable or commensurate benefits in student performance. Even this year, we hinted at our devotion to maintaining K-12 educations spending levels.

Why? The State is broke and enrollment is declining. Is this not the perfect time to challenge the old broken sacred cow? I guess not.

So, as the CTA begins another nine figure campaign war chest designed at picking up the last few seats they need to completely put the GOP in a closet in Sacramento, we missed a great opportunity to really go down swinging.

Assembly and Senate leaders should find a willing school district and sue to block implementation of the no layoff provision of this budget, on the grounds that it illegally alters labor agreements struck by local school boards. If not, what Sacramento will have just accomplished is to force their idiocy down to a local level, causing the same financial calamity they’ve brought upon themselves.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2011 at 7:33 am and is filed under Blog Posts.