Ever inquisitive, Bacon’s Rebellion has been busy investigating the concerns of Del. Brian Moran, D-Alexandria, that the Republican transportation plan would fund road building at the expense of “holding more classes in trailers, having fewer nursing-home beds for our elderly and failing to provide equipment to our first-responders.”
(Ritual disclaimer: I am not defending the financing elements of the GOP plan, which I regard with loathing. I am addressing the flawed logic of those who oppose it for the wrong reasons.)
In particular, I am interested in Del. Moran’s insinuation that increasing K-12 spending by a mere 19 percent during the current biennial budget is insufficient to hold down the number of children schooled in pre-fabricated dwellings, and that only the continued break-neck expansion of state aid to education can prevent Virginia’s schools from evolving into trailer parks, albeit trailer parks with books. (On this last point, actually, one cannot be entirely confident that Republicans don’t have it in mind to deprive the children of books as well.)
One of the legitimate factors driving increased K-12 spending is the increase in number of school children. More children translates into more school buildings (trailers, whatever), more teachers, more local education bureaucrats and more state education bureaucrats. One could hardly begrudge an increase in state aid that kept pace with the increase in the number of loveable little tykes thirsty for knowledge.
It so happens that the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Services projects the number of school children that Virginia will have to educate in the years ahead. Here are the numbers:
School year Enrollment
2006-20007…… 1,202,686
2007-2008……… 1,207,360
2008-2009……… 1,211,140
2010-2011………. 1,217,478
201102012……… 1,224,028
That represents an enrollment growth rate of less than one half of one percent annually. I can’t find any projections for population increase during those same years, but the population of Virginia grew approximately eight percent between 2000 and 2006, or more than one percent a year.
In other words, the increase in school enrollment is slowing to a crawl, and it is greated outpaced by the increase in the general population. (Even if the rate of population increase slows from the torrid pace of the early decade, a significant gap is likely to persist.) More inhabitants means more taxpayers, which means more tax revenue. It would be fully within the state’s means, even if one percent of the General Fund were diverted to transportation, to continue dumping money into Virginia’s public education system at a rate that greatly exceeds the incremental increase in the number of students.
If exercising modest restraint in the metastazing growth in education spending results in relegating more school children to trailers, then Virginia’s education system is even more dysfunctional than it is acknowledged to be. Such a development would signal that priorities are seriously skewed, and that someone needs to ask where the money is going.