Stan Geiger

What Happened to the Quarter Trillion?

In a post, yesterday, I cited a Tulsa World report that said "public school systems received $521.1 billion in funding from federal, state and local sources in 2006..."

Later in that same story the World said, "The report found that school districts allotted $271.8 billion to elementary and secondary education."

You'll notice there's quite a spread between the total amount of money the report said flowed to public school systems and the amount the report says was spent in what would classically be referred to as public schools. There's a $250 billion spread, in fact. That's a lot of money to be left under the heading of "other crap." So, what's the deal?

I can't say---with certainty. But I can offer some suppositions.

The $271.8 billion figure cited refers only to elementary and secondary schools. It, therefore, probably doesn't include money for pre-K stuff, which is all the rage these days. Educators, it seems, want a kid enrolled in some kind of public education program from the time they fall out of the womb. That's nonsense, of course. And it's expensive nonsense.

Money that flows to career tech is likely not included in the elementary and secondary category, either. Career tech was once vo-tech, and was part of high schools. Nowadays, career tech is its own separately-funded entity. But it is still a "public school system."

I've argued, in the past, that we have an overlap in place. Anything career tech offers can be offered by a community college, and vice versa. This is a duplication of services that costs taxpayers a lot of money---needlessly.

I imagine debt is involved as well. In other words, the $521.1 billion probably includes all money that flowed to public school systems, debt proceeds included, while the $271.8 billion figure is probably just a compilation of the operating budgets of all elementary and secondary schools.

The amount of debt issued by public school systems nationwide in any given year must be significant. Tulsa Public Schools, not too long ago, floated $160 million in debt all by its lonesome self. That's for one district out of over five hundred in the state. And Oklahoma is just one state out of fifty.

Debt proceeds to schools, I'm sure, aren't considered tax revenue in the accounting scheme. They should be. Money for paying off the debt, paying the interest on the debt and paying the administrative costs attached to the debt comes from property tax revenue. When schools borrow money, it's a tax.

School bond issues are prolific, and they are constant and ongoing. You can see that just by watching the local news on an election night. The crawler shows voting results for school bond issue after school bond issue.

School bond issues invariably pass---by wide margins. I suspect most of the people that show up to cast votes in school bond elections are educators. They, of course, all vote yes. Most other folks stay home.

The World reporter was kind enough to point out that of the $271.8 billion "allotted" to elementary and secondary education in 2006, 89.3 percent of it went to payroll and benefits for employees. And that fact speaks volumes.

The game educators play these days is obvious to me. They scream of not being able to afford textbooks and computers, about not having money to supply classrooms, about rising fuel costs, and they scream about leaky roofs. For these things, educators say, taxpayers must dig deeper. It's all about the kids.

But when more tax money comes, whatever doesn't absolutely, positively have to go to an increased cost of doing business---which is about 90 percent---goes to pay for insurance premiums, pension contributions, free cell phones, free laptops, free vacations or whatever, and, of course, pay raises for employees.

Meanwhile, if educators need the leaky roof fixed, they borrow money for that. If they need new buses, they borrow money for that. If they want better athletic facilities, they borrow money for that. If they need textbooks and/or computers, they borrow money for that. As long as they can borrow money to pay for things that should be paid for with operations money, they can keep feeding themselves more and more each year.

Providing education for the kidlets is one thing. But BS is BS. It's time we started acting like we have some sense.

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