Wednesday, October 19, 2005
High School Sports is an Unfunded Mandate?
Dr. Ben Mays, the Clinton veterinarian, checked in on Tuesday's show to talk about how local school districts report (or sometimes don't report) spending on varsity athletics. The Rogers district, among others, has recently sued the state over supposedly no sufficiently funding public education. Mays has some probing questions for the districts and places the total cost of high school athletic programs statewide at around $200 million. That is no small sum considering that about half of the sixth graders are not reading at grade level and many high school students are functionally illiterate. Mays had a lot to say, which is all available in the free "on demand" archives of WAI Radio.com, which is linked in the left hand column.
The most recent Lakeview episode involved claims by the Rogers school district and others that the $5400/student funding formula did not give them sufficient funds to pay for "unfunded mandates". The question is this: What about the unfunded, non-mandates, like sports programs? How can school district officials claim to be unable to pay for unfunded mandates when they're spending big bucks on programs that are not mandated? The Rogers school district reported (or half-reported) spending almost a million dollars on their varsity programs last year. (The true figure is probably closer to $2 million.) The question is, why wasn't this money used for mandated programs instead of for non-mandated sports? But the bigger question is this: Why didn't the attorney general's office ask this question during the recent hearings with the special masters? And why didn't the masters ask it? It seems to me that for those in charge, the most important aspect of the education reform movement is to preserve, at all costs, the sanctity of sports.
And then there is this question: Is there not a constitutional problem with diverting---for nonmandated sports programs---huge portions of money taken from taxpayers for the purpose of fulfilling the constitutional mandate of adequate education? Shouldn't this question be raised before we're asked to pay even more taxes for more "reforms"?
At the risk of stating the obvious, it is grossly inadequate to audit only 20 districts sports spending every year. It is a proposal designed to protect the status quo, which is typical of state government.
The most recent Lakeview episode involved claims by the Rogers school district and others that the $5400/student funding formula did not give them sufficient funds to pay for "unfunded mandates". The question is this: What about the unfunded, non-mandates, like sports programs? How can school district officials claim to be unable to pay for unfunded mandates when they're spending big bucks on programs that are not mandated? The Rogers school district reported (or half-reported) spending almost a million dollars on their varsity programs last year. (The true figure is probably closer to $2 million.) The question is, why wasn't this money used for mandated programs instead of for non-mandated sports? But the bigger question is this: Why didn't the attorney general's office ask this question during the recent hearings with the special masters? And why didn't the masters ask it? It seems to me that for those in charge, the most important aspect of the education reform movement is to preserve, at all costs, the sanctity of sports.
And then there is this question: Is there not a constitutional problem with diverting---for nonmandated sports programs---huge portions of money taken from taxpayers for the purpose of fulfilling the constitutional mandate of adequate education? Shouldn't this question be raised before we're asked to pay even more taxes for more "reforms"?
At the risk of stating the obvious, it is grossly inadequate to audit only 20 districts sports spending every year. It is a proposal designed to protect the status quo, which is typical of state government.
