What Difference Does It Make How Much We Spend on Schools?
By
Mike Bullard
A number of years ago, I was called as a minister to the intensive care unit of a hospital to visit a teenager who had been beaten with a baseball bat in a drug deal gone bad. I learned he had also been flunking school, building up a juvenile record and starting down a very bad path.
Later, I heard the young man was attending an alternative high school similar to Project CdA. A few months later he marched into my office and laid a report card on my desk with all A’s on it. I asked him what had happened and he said a friendship with one of his teachers helped him see what he was doing to himself. The young man went on to graduate high school, attend college, and enter the Idaho State Police.
Besides a good feeling story, this also has to do with dollars and cents. On the path he was going, society would have been hit with the costs of probably several bouts with the law enforcement, trials, incarceration. Maybe some more uninsured medical expense. Probably father a kid or two that would go on welfare. Hate to say it so crassly, but add up the costs. K’ching, k’ching, k’ching.
Maybe a quarter million over his lifetime? Easy. Instead, he is a taxpayer. He’s married and has kids who are likely to become taxpayers too. What’s that now over the course of their lives? Million dollar return on the investment of one teacher’s friendship? Easy.
They tracked down the other graduates of that alternative school and found that over half of those “problem kids” went on to college. Talk about a government program paying for itself over and over again, in big dollars, let alone in human well-being! That’s what happens when schools get a little more per student so class sizes are a little smaller, and teachers have time to be the professionals most feel called to be.
Idaho is 50 th in the nation in school funding. We are 43 rd in the nation in percentage of those who attend college and dead last in percentage of those who finish any four year college. This is in a country that is rapidly dropping in its world status in education and technology. School should be dealt with carefully and wisely, indeed, not just throwing money at schools. Yet funding must never be seen as an expense. It is an investment in our kids, our families, our economy, and our nation.
Editor's Note: Mike is a retired pastor running for legislative district 4 seat A
Featured in the Nickel's Worth, October 15, 2010.
