Education Budget Cut

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Date: 02-23-2010

Education Budget Cut

The Senate passed Senate Bill 10-065 in January 19, which cuts $110 million from state K-12 support and specifies that the state will not cover another $20 million for enrollment. The bill also reduces state school aid by an additional $67 million. The bill now moves to the House. In addition to the K-12 budget cut, the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) approved a staff recommendation to cut state tax support of higher education by about $225 million this budget year. Like Colorado, California reduced stated budget by $1.8 billion, New York City cut $1.1 billion in K-12 and 570 million in higher education, and Virginia also cut $133 million in K-12 support. In addition to these state, San Francisco, San Diego, Illinois, and Kansas etc., almost of all states reduce education budget. These states are in budget crisis. In case of Colorado, its budget is facing a shortfall of about $786 million, so the JBC thinks that the education is one of the few places funding can legally be cut. Even though the state is in an economic crisis, and people think the budget cut is unavoidable, I believe that the government should not reduce the education budget.

The first reason why the education budget should not be reduced is that the budget cut would change the education systems in a bad way. Budget cut could means layoffs and closed schools often in poor neighborhood non-whites. The experience of New York City shows it is true. In 2002, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg closed nearly 90 schools because of the budget and a reform of school systems. The closed schools’ populations were mostly working-class Black and Latino students. Besides, because of closed schools and teacher layoffs, class sizes will be bigger, and the quality of education will be poor. Ultimately, children suffer a great loss from the budget cut.

In addition to K-12 schools, college students also suffer because the tuition must increase. The U.S. college tuition is very expensive. The average tuition is the most expensive among North America and Europe. In case of the U.S., private four-year average tuition is $26,273 and public four-year is $7,020 per year. On the other hand, France has 82 universities and all are public. None of them charges tuition fees to even international students. Germany’s average tuition of public colleges is $1,367, UK is $4,299, and Canada is $4,724 (College Board). Even though the college tuition in the U.S. is very expensive compared to other countries, rising tuition seems to impute the shortage of budget to students.

Originally, the budget crisis was caused by faulty economic policies certainly not helped at Wall Street. When people were suffering in economic crisis, Wall Street firms handed out massive bonuses to their employees. Total compensation for employees at major Wall Street firms will reach $145 billion. Analyst Doug Singsen said:

A windfall tax of 2 percent on these payouts would be enough to prevent all the proposed cuts to health care and education. It is also worth recalling that it was the financial crisis caused by Wall Street's irresponsible speculation on home prices that caused this recession in the first place. (Singsen, “Why won't they tax Wall Street?”)

Imputing the responsible to people is not fair because the government and Wall Street tycoon bear the responsibility for the economic crisis.

Second, since social services, such as education and health care, are human rights, all people should be able to access them regardless of poverty. However, if higher education’s tuition increases, poor people cannot access them. Fundamentally, free education, including higher education is an ideal, because everyone can be educated and have a same chance regardless of any environment. A slogan “free education for all” represents the ultimate goal of education well.

Educated people are important sources and foundations for development of the nation. Therefore, the government should support the education even if the long-term benefits are not immediately obvious. Some people may think that the funding for education budget should be reduced because of shortage of the budget. State representative Jack Pommer (D-Boulder), who voted for the budget cut, said “If you work at a business and if your budget went down by half what would you do? You would have to cut costs. I do not know where they will cut. I do not know what they will do. It may mean higher tuition, it may mean fewer jobs” (Truong and Wolf). Jack Pommer’s assessment of situation is wrong. Education and business cannot be compared, because education is a social service and related to human rights.

Reducing education budget is a temporary solution. It can just solve the problem in a short-term, but educated people may be able to solve the fundamental problems, such as economic systems, and be important sources of development.

For this reason, many countries value education and support it. The Colorado state also passed Amendment 23 to support education. The law’s basic aim is to increase spending on kindergarten through twelfth grade public education, so it creates a special fund, which is the State Education Trust Fund, to help pay for the increased spending. The reason for making the laws is that people think the education is basic human rights. However, the cutting fund discriminates against financial resources and infringes on human rights to education.

The current economic decline has reduced tax revenues, thereby reducing the amount of money going into the fund. Therefore, to solve this problem, tax revenue must increase. However, because people are suffering from the economic crisis, raising taxes is a hard sell. The obvious way of increasing tax revenue would be to raise taxes on the state’s wealthy. Even though the State Education Trust Fund was made for education, the Gallagher (1982) and the TABOR Amendment (1992) restricts taxes. The TABOR prohibits increases in local tax rates without voter approval. Some researchers analyze that the TABOR interferes with increasing the education budget and it causes discrimination of class. “Because tax rates cannot go up, the amount that local property taxes contribute to schools is directly related to the ebbs and flows of taxable property values throughout Colorado” (Robert and Brown 4).

In addition, the Gallagher Amendment also contributes to shortage of education funds. The Gallagher Amendment divides the state’s total property tax burden between residential and nonresidential (commercial) property. According to the Amendment, 45% of the total amount of state property tax collected must come from residential property, and 55% of the property tax collected must come from commercial property. As a result, the government cannot take more taxes from commercial property even though they get many profits from the state. Therefore, these two systems should be reformed in a way of raising taxes on the commercial properties and rich people.

The second solution for increasing the education budget is to reduce the defense budget. The U.S. defense budget is the highest in the world. The U.S. Department of Defense spent $768.2 billion in 2010 fiscal year. This is about 19% of the United States federal budget expenditures and 28% of estimated the U.S. tax revenues. It also reaches 4.7% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Fulghum and Bruno). While the education budget decreased in most states, the defense budget increased by $7 billion in 2010. If 0.7% of the defense budget was converted to education funding, the states’ education budget would not be reduced.

The U.S. government says that the military spending is to provide security, but actually, it is to maintain global and regional power status. Now, we know the war is not for the peace any more, but education is for the people. The war kills children, but education gives children hope. The government should support hope.

In summary, many states, including Colorado, decided to reduce their education budget because of shortage of funds. The lawmakers said this was unavoidable because of the U.S. economic crisis. However, the budget cut will change the education system in a bad way because teachers will lose their jobs and schools located in poor neighborhood will be closed. It may take education rights away even though people should be able to have an equal chance at education. The lawmakers’ decision is bad because reducing education budget is same to divide a pie. It is a choice who chooses smaller slices of pie. The solution, not dividing a pie, is reform of some laws that prohibit from raising taxes, and then rich people should pay more taxes. Besides, defense budget should be reduced, and channeled into education. A Korean proverb says, “Education is a long-term plan about 100 years.” This means the government should support education even though the effects are not shown right now. As this proverb says, education should always be protected.

Work cited

College Board, "Trends in Student Aid 2009" College board inspiring minds, October 2009,

22 Feb 2010, < http://www.collegeboard.com/student/pay/add-it-up/4494.html >

Fulghum, David A. and Bruno, Michael "U.S. Defense Budget Goes Up" Aviation Week,

1 Feb 2010, 22 Feb 2010,

channel=defense&id=news/awx/2010/02/01/awx_02_01_2010_p0-201129.xml>

Roberts, Jeffrey A. and Brown, Charles S. “Colorado’s State Budget Tsunami”

University of Denver July 2009:4

Singsen, Doug “Why won't they tax Wall Street?” Socialist Workers, 12 Feb 2010, 22 Feb 2010,

< http://socialistworker.org/2010/02/12/why-wont-they-tax-wall-street>

Truong, Thanh and Wolf, Jeffrey “Students rally against proposed higher education cuts” 9news,

6 April 2009, 22 Feb 2010, < http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=113277>