SB 2017-142: Return Education to the Regions Act (Passed)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This originally started off as an 1184AZ bill, but was picked up by Peebs back in April I think. It has taken a while to get an arrangement people would agree on and it was sidelined for a while because of Healthcare taking up most of my attention.


The basic idea is to reduce the DoE's operating budget for administration and overhead and distributes that money to the 50 poorest school districts or Local Education Authorities. These administrative capacities being cut, will be freed up as a result of Sections 1 and 2, to enable such a reduction in the first place.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As someone who know has the joy of having to work to devise the regional educational set up (through the Assembly) I've got a number of questions, and issues, that I hope my former colleagues in the Senate can help with.

1.) Is the 2018 date workable? I have a feeling that this was written in a while ago, when 2018 seemed a long way off but the reality is that we're going to give the regions two months (including the infamously slow December) to create their educational system.

2.) How drastic will the 25% cut be?I know that it's generally popular to support cutting administration based costs (and the first thing that you look to cut) but I'm wondering just how drastic the 25% cut would be, and what effects it would have.

I have concerns that whilst this bill does something that is largely popular, it could face some problems later on

The dates should be pushed back.

Not because they "only have two months", but because they were required to start a month ago. Fiscal Year 2018 began October 1st, 2017.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I will assume sponsorship since no one else has.

LIBERTARIAN SPIRAL SHALL RISE AGAIN!!!!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

We haven't had an official budget yet have we? Does that mean that 25% of whatever gets allocated to education in the committee right now gets cut?

The committee is not allocating anything that the Congress had not already passed. The whole plan was to compile all passed spending and revenue legislation or portions of legislation and add it together using the RL FY 2016 as the baseline, since that is what we are presently operating under having inherited it from the reset to find out, "where we are" and then pass that without any changes so that we have a recognized official budget and thereby avoid the downgrade. My assumption was that this underlying bill would either pass before hand or get delayed until after process was complete.


So to answer the question posed, the 25% cut would relative to the FY2016 spending levels in RL, unless of course some in game bill has passed since the June 2016 reset that would have altered those levels.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would like an answer to Blair's second question before I decide whether I can support this.

The idea is to substantial reduce the amount of curriculum decision making being done at the Federal level, and then taking that freed up money and issuing it to the poorest school districts who struggle to make repairs and so forth.

The 25% number was one that I came up with towards the end of the debate in the House. And I would note that it passed unanimously.  The original number was 1%.

I would be willing to accept a reduced percentage.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Giving power to the regions to decide how to mold their curriculum is a worthy cause in my opinion. What's best for one group may not be best for all, so seeing resources allocated for the regions while still maintaining the integrity of the public school system is an ideal we should work towards. With that said, I do agree with many here and will have to respectfully differ from my friend Speaker Yankee on the 25% cut. We should try to narrow the focus on the administrative side and see what can be done to reasonably streamline the process.

With all do respect Senator, the simple fact is that the integrity of the public school system is something that we have let fall by the wayside. We have districts that do not have revenue capacity to support adequate public schools and adequate facilities, materials and so forth and that means that a lot of people are being denied a good education and a chance at a better life.

Some of these districts, be they rural or inner city were long plagued by lack of revenue, others were deprived of revenue as a result of factory outsourcing depriving the community of property tax paying, middle class factory workers. And we have done nothing, nothing to replace this lost revenue for these communities to make sure that there school system's don't decline. The result in its absence has been a tremendous decline, instead. It goes without saying, that the ones most impacted are minority school districts.

The purpose of this bill has been to get money out of the hands of Nyman bureaucrats and send it back to Main Street Atlasian schools where it will be put to use in the repairing of facilities, acquiring of text books and technology and so forth. At the same time, it seeks to begin moving control of education back to the regions, which was promised in the Constitutional Convention, is good for them and good for the game. It would be extremely unfortunate, if after the all promises made by Senator Spiral's endorsed ticket about strong regions, that this opportunity to begin that process of regionalizing education would be left to fall by the way side.

Now while I apologize for not being able to keep as on top of this bill thread as I would have liked, I must say that I am extremely disappointed that no one sent me a message to directly to alert me to the questions needing to be answered. I have a lot that I am working on, including the budget, and a really horrible work schedule in real life on top of it. It would have taken five seconds to PM me a reminder to get your questions answered, but I am certain that were it not for the President, who is not even in this chamber, these questions would have gone unanswered and this Senate would have voted this bill down. I don't get this passive resistance towards PMing people when it matters, because we seem to have no problem doing it at election time. But sh**t, got a question about a bill, and it seems be asking too much to have some say "hey check education bill, need answer to my questions". And you wonder why little of value ever gets done around here.

The thought that rather then engaging and taking action to address a severe plight facing our poor and minority communities, with regards to our education system is just simply barbaric, BARBARIC!!! If you don't like this present design, then by all means, offer an alternative. Several people contributed to this bill in the House, AZ, Peebs, Truman, myself come to mind. This bill dying out of passivity and disinterest would be a crime of monumental proportions. I think I can end with no better call, then to quote the esteemed Poirot in saying, "Think of the Children!".

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I'm very skeptical that this bill is going to help the poor. It cuts 25% of the education budget

This is incorrect. It does not cut 25% of the education budget. It cuts 25% of the department of education's "operating expenses" including staff and facilities. This was intended to be commiserate with a reduction in the responsibility for curriculum with that authority being transition back to the regions.

No money is being cut from the actual programs, so this statement is false.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

So the 25% figure is arbitrary, Yankee?  I'm not comfortable supporting anywhere near such a large cut without knowing how this would directly affect the DoE, teachers, or schools which might be forced to close due to inadequate funds, thereby increasing class sizes and teacher shortages.

Also, is there a reason science is not part of the federal curriculum?  I don't think nixing science as a requirement is a good idea at all when Atlasian students lag behind other countries on academic performance in this subject.

Scott, for the love god, do you think this would have past a Labor Majority House with the support of Truman, Peebs, JGibson, VPH and Illiniwek, if we cut 25% from the total education budget.

I even put forth an amendment in the House that specifically listed where the cuts were coming from since Truman was concerned that such was not clear enough.

To avoid laziness (since it is clearly written in the text of bill yet remains unclear) producing stupidity, here is the relevant exchange from the House debate.

The amendment is adopted.

Apologies for the lateness of the question, but — where are these cuts coming from? Are we simply reducing funding for all DoE programs by 25%, or are there specific areas being targeted?

I read operating budget as basically administrative costs and personnel and the only programs we would be cutting are those dealing with curriculum setting beyond enforcement of the requirements stated in Section 2. I would be open to considering amendments to target the cuts in certain areas and refine the language some. I was planning to offer one on Tuesday since I hope to have time on that day for such.

Excellent, thank-you.

This is acceptable.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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The only thing this cuts is federal gov't administrative expenses. Distributed funds remain intact both to persons, regions and LEAs, and in fact the bill even creates a new distribution.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Also, is there a reason science is not part of the federal curriculum?  I don't think nixing science as a requirement is a good idea at all when Atlasian students lag behind other countries on academic performance in this subject.

Well frankly if you want my personal opinion we would completely remove all curriculum requirement and devolve complete responsibility for education back to the regions, which is what we were promised in the lead up to the reset, I would note.

As for what was included and what was not, this was the original text:

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As introduced by its original House sponsor 1184AZ. The bottom portions were amended out by then Representative Enduro.