Despite the fact that Kansas school spending has been increasing rapidly in recent years, and despite the fact that K-12 education has been spared the large cuts that most other state agencies are facing, it’s still okay to whine.
That’s the attitude of KNEA (the Kansas National Education Association, the teachers union) expressed in the late edition of Under the Dome Today.
I wish I knew who wrote these flowery dispatches. This issue starts with an extended quotation from Dante’s Inferno, something I may (or may not) have read in college.
After its excursion into Medieval allegory, this edition describes how the Senate Tax Committee, chaired by Les Donovan of Wichita, decided to not decouple from the federal tax code, decided to not cancel the phase-out of the state tax, and put on hold the phase-out of the corporate franchise tax. (That’s a tax on the simple fact of existence.)
The KNEA raises the specter of children not being educated at every turn. They did it again in this issue of their newsletter. This is their staple.
If the ability to educate the children of Kansas hangs in the delicate balance of small shifts in funding, we’re in a lot of trouble. The incessant whining of the KNEA and the rest of the education spending lobby needs to be exposed for just what it is.