The damaging legacy of Jeb! Bush, Vol. 4: School spending next to last in U.S.

Blast Off!'s continuing series about the damage done to Florida by Jeb! Bush and his minions looks once more at education, where the former governor's scorched-earth strategy seems to have had the most effect.

A report in today's Palm Beach Post reveals that Florida ranks next-to-last among the states and the District of Columbia in school spending relative to wealth.

For every $1,000 of residents' personal income, Florida spends $33.51 compared with the U.S. average of $43.34. Comparably poor Georgia ranks 13th, spending $48.21 for every $1,000.

Residents in South Florida and parts of the Treasure Coast, also bear an uncommon share of the burden.

Though local school districts spend less on education per student than the national average, they tend to pay a much larger portion of the bill.

Local funding in property-rich Palm Beach and Martin counties accounts for 70 percent and 74 percent, respectively, of all education spending, compared with 48 percent for the average U.S. school district. St. Lucie County is closer to the norm. It ponied up 55 percent of total school funding in 2006.

Palm Beach County is more generous than Treasure Coast school districts when it comes to spending per student, but it still pays only $8,345 compared with a national average of $9,138. Martin spends $7,674 and St. Lucie $7,239 per child.

The U.S. Census Bureau this week released detailed public school finance figures for every U.S. school district from the 2005-2006 school year as part of an annual report.

Given the state's budget crisis, local school districts will be forced to cover even more of the cost to educate Florida's children, said Vern Pickup-Crawford, a lobbyist for Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie county school districts.

The state employs a Robin Hood formula, which takes money from districts with high property values and healthy tax rolls and feeds a portion to poor districts. There have been three lawsuits in the 30 years since the formula was enacted, Pickup-Crawford said. The courts upheld the formula in each case.

Meanwhile, on the same page of the paper, we see that the ludicrous and destructive Crist-Rubio revenue slashing has increased the burden on school districts profoundly.

The Palm Beach County School District will have to ax between $25 million to $30 million next school year under proposals released Wednesday by the Florida House and Senate.

It was no surprise for the district, which had expected next year's $1.5 billion operating budget to be the worst it's seen in more than a decade, but it comes at a time when the district has already made cuts to its budget and faces rising costs for utilities, fuel and health insurance.

"We have a challenge," Superintendent Art Johnson said at a school board discussion on the budget. "We do not have a crisis at this point, but it's not business as usual."

[...]

If passed, the budget would mark the first time in a decade the district is getting less money from the state than the year before. Just two years ago, the budget grew by $99 million.

The district is faced with making the cuts a few months before it opens three new schools, which will increase spending on electricity and personnel by $3 million. The interest it earns on investments is also decreasing, which will leave the district with $5 million less than a year ago.

Unlike in previous tough budget years, when the district could leave teaching positions unfilled to save money, the state's class-size amendment requires caps on class size, making it more difficult to make significant cuts in the budget.

I realize all of this has been a conscious strategy by Jeb! and his GOP sycophants, later folks like Crist and Rubio, to destroy public education in an effort to advance truly repugnant ideas like privatization and vouchers. However, the real damage is done to our children, who are left behind as always by Republicans. You see, needless to say, Republicans don't give a shit about children or education or the poor, no matter what rhetoric they might use to suggest otherwise. All they care about is making themselves and their cronies richer, and one way some believe they can do that is to privatize everything.

Republican rule has been disastrous for Florida, economically, educationally, culturally, and morally. As a former educator and one with two small children who are or will be in Florida public schools, I'm disgusted with the way education has been minimalized and compartmentalized by our state's leaders.

It's going to take years to undo the damage done by the Bushies, but we're going to have to start by kicking the idiots out, beginning this fall. A tall order, I know, given the social conservatives who dominate the state outside of the Glans™ ... but just as Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy brought gains in Congress for the Democrats, so too must we implement a 67-County Strategy in Florida. Our kids deserve our best effort ... and under GOP rule, they're getting far from it.