It's a plan that Steve Sundquist, chairman of the School Board's finance committee, calls unsustainable but responsible.
From the Seattle Times, via NewsAlert.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Quote of the Day
The Seattle School Board has decided to use $12.6 million of financial reserves to fund, among other things, 102 new jobs even while student enrollment decreases:
From the Seattle Times, via NewsAlert.
From the Seattle Times, via NewsAlert.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I actually think it makes perfect sense. Lets say you have large class sizes, teachers teaching material they didn't major in, and a massive amount of unused funding. Then you also have a shrinking student enrollment. You can create 102 jobs, then student enrollment will drop and the need for the new jobs will drop and they can just cut the jobs. It might not be responsible if they were hiring those people and not warning them that they were temporary jobs, but otherwise I see no problem creating temporary jobs when you have excess funding, if the use of that funding actually improves the school.
Just because something is unsustainable doesn't make it irresponsible. It just makes it temporary. Like I know you support further oil exploration and production, yet the practice is inherently unsustainable. While oil still exists the price of energy is much lower than if it hadn't, and while they have extra funding the schools could potentially be better. Although both are temporary they aren't inherently bad, and are only irresponsible if it is unknown that it is temporary and there is no plan for after the temporary state.
There's nothing in the linked article that gives any reason to believe that your assumptions are true. In fact, the linked article is quite clear that this budget is just buying time until they have to make *hard* decisions, perhaps as soon as the 2009-10 school year.
The facts are what they are, you don't get to make them up just to disagree with me :-)
"unsustainable but responsible"?
That must be like "fake but accurate!"
--chicopanther
This looks like nothing so much as a case of "use it or lose it".
Rather then see the money go to waste, i.e. commit the cardinal sin of spending every budgeted dollar, the toothy Mr. Sundquist would rather spend it. After all, if you don't spend it that means you didn't need it to begin with. This'll make a budget increase in the face of declining enrollments easier.
"unsustainable but responsible"
Democrat policy in three words.
Post a Comment