Reform Welfare Before Raising Taxes

Below is my full response to the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper's recent article regarding polls showing California voters are likely to approve tax hikes to help support our public schools.

As someone who has spent the last twenty-eight years teaching in three different school districts in three different parts of our state, I want to urge voters to reject any proposals to increase taxes to improve public education.

Over the last three years, the state has been brutal to public education. Budget cuts have resulted in massive teacher layoffs, the elimination of performing arts programs, and the realization that our public schools are not getting the job done.

This mess is the result of decisions made by our elected leaders who now want to see hard working taxpayers clean it up by increasing their taxes. This is not a solution to a problem as much as it is a punishment for being employed in this state.

If our leaders want to create more money and ear mark it for public education, they can start by ending the incentive to be a life long recipient of welfare. Rather than rewarding welfare recipients for bringing more children into the state who flood our schools with their low skills, lack of desire to improve, and even less parental support, we need to cut their benefits and encourage them to find another state to live off of.

Student enrollment would quickly decrease relieving school districts of the pressure to hire more teachers and implement programs for people who give us little to no return on our tax payer investment.

Test scores would also increase as would graduation rates and our state could marvel at seeing the percentage of college ready students go through the roof. California might even return to the top tier of states on the education front rather than remain at the bottom.

Ridding the state of its massive welfare population will also allow school districts to place a halt on new construction and allow them to better utilize existing campuses. With fewer campuses also comes the need for fewer administrators whose six figure salaries dwarf those of any teacher and save districts even more money.

Our schools can no longer be education centers for children from supportive and motivated families while also serving as glorified day care centers for parents who are unfit to have children in the first place.

If we eliminate the welfare problem that is sucking this state of much needed resources and replace it with a system that is designed to help those in temporary need rather than reward people too lazy or unskilled to work at all, we instantly improve our public schools.

Feeding The Problem

I am sick and tired of the public school system being used as the state's welfare system. Why is it a school's responsibility to feed our children? We all know breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Without it, it becomes difficult to focus on the most basic tasks. It is true for those of us in the work world and it is true for our kids in school.
My employer, the Hemet Unified School District, does not make sure I eat a nutritious breakfast each day. However, like all other school districts in California, they willingly feed our children. Why? When it comes right down to it, it is all about test scores. Hungry students do not score as well on standardized test as students who are well fed. Based on the girth of or school children, we should have the smartest students in the world but do not come close.
I resent seeing my tax money used to feed our children simply because we have allowed the dysfunctional to continually procreate. And believe me, we have far too many dysfunctional adults pumping out dysfunctional children.
This has nothing to do with living in a low income area. I have seen countless students from low income homes arrive to school fed and focused on learning to think this is a poverty issue. It is not about poverty as much as it is about our priorities. If you can have a kid then you better be able to feed him three square meals a day. If not, you are dysfunctional and have no business raising children.
I admit, I grew up in an affluent community. My parents also raised eight children. We all got up early enough and did not leave the house without having eaten our breakfast. We also arrived to school on time and knew if we could not meet these simple expectations, the privileges of the day were not ours to enjoy. It does not take money to understand and value these concepts. Unfortunately, today we have too many parents unable or unwilling to model these behaviors to their children.
If you are a teen aged parent, chances are you are dysfunctional. If you are a parent living off of the welfare system, chances are you are a dysfunctional parent. If you work and commute such ungodly hours that you rely on schools to raise your kids, you are a dysfunctional parent. And if you can make sure your little Johnny has a new pair of soccer cleats but can't get him to school on time, you are a dysfunctional parent. Quit having kids! Please, I can not afford to raise them anymore.
One school recently reported feeding 911 students free breakfast; over 80 percent of which were delivered to their classroom by student volunteers. At a cost of $1.25 per breakfast, this works out to almost 200 thousand dollars a year. In other words, they pay the equivalent of four teacher salaries to feed students. What economic sense does this make? At a time we are laying off functional tax paying teachers, we are feeding children who will in too many cases become dysfunctional adults like their parents and be unable to hold down a job.
I read a quote from one parent who said, "My son would rather have slept in late than eat a meal." Fine, let him. See how long he makes this choice once he realizes no one cares if he chooses to go hungry. He may change his priorities but do not expect me, and other tax payers, to feed his sleepy butt.
Democracy and welfare do not go well together. To be a democratic state requires citizens to actively participate in the decision making process and accept the will of the majority. In a welfare state, you decide what level of life you want to exist at and rely on hard working tax payers to pay for the rest. It is time to return to a state of democracy and end these ridiculous programs before they turn hard working tax payers like me into welfare recipients because we no longer can afford to meet our own needs after we have paid to meet the needs of others.