The reason a society seeks to educate its young is based on the reality: it is in youth that the future of our society rests. Every primitive tribe has an educational program for its young with the purpose of strengthening and perpetuating the tribe.

Our tribe, our republic, seeks to educate our young through an elaborate and expensive government “educational system” that, overall, is ineffective. The premise of my book I am researching, “Kettering Public Education In The Year 2030,” is that, through a grassroots effort, Kettering, over time, transforms its system of public education and, by 2030, becomes a model system for the entire nation.

It is interesting to think that a successfully transformed system would be an invention widely copied.

The first step in building a system is to have a clear understanding of the aim of the system. We’ve created monsters called corporations whose sole aim is to make money and who see no responsibility to defend or promote the common good of society. What were we thinking? The creation and feeding of these monsters makes no sense if our aim truly is, “liberty and justice for all.”

The challenge I’ve made to myself is to write a book in which I imaging a future where Kettering, through a vitalization of its democracy, determines to create a system of education centered on preparing youth to advance the aim of “liberty and justice for all.” It would be fun to try to write a script of how a community could arrive at such a consensus.

The fun part of imagining this future will be to create a system design that seems feasible. I have in mind that readers of my book should be as Gene Wilder with hair on end, in “Young Frankenstein” shouting, “It. Could. Work.”

The structure of the system should demonstrate its aim. I’m thinking our system of public education should be an entrepreneurial system of some type — designed to empower students as individuals and teachers as professionals. It’s structure should be one that empowers community and cooperation and, at the same time, empowers each individual.

In the book I am writing, I imagine that at some point, a majority of the Kettering Board agrees on the aim of the Kettering system and agree to to fund an RFP that would pay chosen applicants to research, write and defend their plans for how Kettering might best achieve that aim. These plans would somehow be evaluated in a process I’ve not yet thought through, but I’m sure could fill a book. I want to write a more detailed RFP, but here is a rough draft of part of the information such an RFP might contain:

Request for Proposal

The Kettering Board is looking for proposals of what a transformed system of public education in Kettering, Ohio should look like.

Kettering seeks to create a system of education centered on: Preparing youth to advance the aim of “liberty and justice for all.”

Kettering believes that the structure of the system should:

• Demonstrate its aim.
• Empower students as individuals and teachers as professionals.
• Create community and encourage cooperation.

Resources:

• Administrative support
• Use of all the gorgeous facilities available in Kettering
• $10,000 per year per student

Interesting that The Columbus Dispatch used the headline “Big Savings” to show how SB5 would impact Ohio. From the standpoint of teachers, firefighters, police and other government workers, approving SB5 will result in a “Big Reduction In Pay.” The report cited by The Dispatch indicates that on average, approving SB5 would mean that each state employee would lose $3,739 in pay each year.

The report explains that if SB5 was already in effect, the state would save $216,871,804 — about 2% of the expected $8 billion shortfall this year — and it projects this savings to the 300,000 employees of school boards and local communities.  From the report:

“Given that the basic elements of state and local government union contracts are generally in line with one another, multiplying the state’s per-employee savings of $3,739 [$216,871,804 /58,005] by the approximate number of local employees [300,000] results in an estimated savings for local government of $1,121,700,000.”

Paul Krugman, in his NYT article today, analyzes cuts in spending at the state and federal level and says, regardless that, “Advocates of big spending cuts often claim that their greatest concern is the burden of debt our children will face. In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.”

Krugman says Texas “seems to be where America’s political future happens first,” and Texas is closing its big budget gap by cutting funding to programs that help poor children.  He says, “While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.”

Texas is proposing a 29% decrease in Medicaid and cuts to education that will require 100,000 layoffs of teachers and school workers.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has analyzed the budgets of 36 states who have released their initial budget proposals for next year, and reports, “27 states plan to spend less in 2012, after inflation, than they did in 2008, and only two — Alaska and North Dakota — expect to spend significantly more.  Total proposed spending would be about 10 percent below 2008 inflation-adjusted levels.” (Ohio’s Gov. Kasich will not make his budget proposal until mid-March.)

• At least 16 states have proposed identifiable, deep cuts in pre-kindergarten and/or K-12 spending.
• At least 23 states have proposed identifiable, deep cuts in health care.  In Arizona, the governor’s budget would cut health care for 280,000 poor individuals.  Washington’s governor proposes eliminating affordable health care for more than 60,000 low-income residents.  Wisconsin’s governor also has submitted a plan to cancel health insurance coverage for about 70,000 people.
• At least 15 states have proposed major, identifiable cuts in higher education.  Arizona would cut state support for public universities by one-fifth; when combined with previous cuts, this would reduce per-student state funding 46 percent below pre-recession levels.  California’s governor proposes to reduce funding for the state’s two university systems by $1 billion. For one of those two systems, the University of California system, the cuts would bring nominal spending down to the fiscal year 1999 level — when the system had 31 percent fewer students than it does today.
• At least 14 states have proposed layoffs or identifiable cuts in pay and/or benefits for public workers.

Incredibly, additional tax cuts are planned in many states — and the revenue reduction from these additional tax cuts will lead to even more cuts in services to the poor and disadvantages.  The Center’s report on 36 states with recorded budgets states, “Some governors — about one in six — are proposing large tax cuts, mostly for corporations.” For example:

• Florida’s governor proposes to cut the corporate income tax to 3 percent from 5.5 percent in the coming fiscal year — costing the state an estimated $459 million in fiscal year 2012 — and eliminate it by 2018.  On the spending side, the governor proposes very large cuts in education, health care and other areas …
• New Jersey’s Governor Christie proposes a variety of tax cuts to begin in 2012, including reducing by 25 percent the corporate minimum tax paid by 93 percent of the state’s corporations and increasing to $1 million from $675,000 the amount that can be bequeathed to heirs tax-free. Taken together, these tax cuts will cost $200 million in fiscal year 2012; by 2016, the cost will have more than tripled to $700 million.  At the same time, Christie has proposed substantial pay decreases for state employees, applied for a waiver from federal Medicaid rules that likely would reduce significantly the number of people with access to the program, and other state spending cuts.

In Ohio, regardless of an $8 billion budget gap, Governor Kasish is pushing for a 4.2% reduction in the state income tax and an elimination of the state’s estate tax.