When the pandemic hit, America made an unheard-of bipartisan effort to support the nation’s public schools. Now, much of that money has been misspent. It went to structural repairs–.things like new parking lots and basketball courts–not to group tutoring sessions that are proven to increase learning and narrow achievement gaps. But it’s not that schools have bad priorities; there are reasons COVID money was misspent, reasons that tell us a lot about what is wrong with public school funding.
Many schools opted out of things proven to close the achievement gaps that have widened during the pandemic simply because they knew the money was a one time gift, a one-off, and that cuts probably lay ahead. There was no motive to invest. A program created today won’t be funded tomorrow. That is exactly what has happened. There is now the threat that federal funding won’t keep pace with inflation. America is once again choosing to balance its budget by jeopardizing its future.
Every year is another year of lobbying at the state and federal level. We subject teachers and principles to a constant fight for every dollar they need. The result is that most schools don’t know how much funding they will have in real terms from year to year. It all depends on state legislatures that often see-saw back and forth between those who are willing to invest in public education and those who are hostile to it. Every new budget must be protested.
There was a time when things weren’t the way they are now. Schools have long gotten the short end of the stick, the way that children in America often do. But over the course of my lifetime, since I was in elementary school myself in the early 80’s, education funding has become more and more of an uphill battle–maybe even a war. Every issue has become a battle in what has come to be a quagmire–a neverending assault on the future of America, its kids. There is one word that doesn’t describe the approach taken–investment. It’s what schools need to know will be there.
I know that the pandemic era infusion of cash was well intended, and very needed. But something is needed much more, and needed now–commitment. Educators need to know their government will be there for them. One infusion of cash may prove pointless, even harmful, because it makes it look like public education is being supported when it isn’t. Public education has been facing a crisis almost as severe and just as important as the pandemic–the slow but steady erosion of a societal commitment to giving it what it needs to give America’s kids (all of them) a future.
Now that the pandemic is over, America’s education system has the same crises it had before, only now the commitment to confront those crises is gone. The lesson of misspent COVID funds is that supporting public schools some of the time or only for a little while doesn’t do us any good.
Progressive Without Apology 