12-17, Monday

Public Schools and Religion

Republicans in Florida continue to push tax-funded vouchers enabling children in public schools to attend private schools on the taxpayers’ ticket. Not satisfied with the McKay Scholarship program and the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program, a school choice advocate and former Governor Bush aide is attempting to convince a Florida tax commission to enable the use of tax dollars to send Florida students to religious schools.

Already we sacrifice more than $50 million of corporate tax dollars to send 16,200 public school students to public schools and more than 17,300 special education students trundled off to private schools at a cost of $119 million. In Florida more than half of all private schools are religious. As our budget continues to erode under the downturn in home sales. The National Governors’ Association reports that

Total year-end balances—ending balances and the amounts in budget stabilization funds—are a critical tool states use to balance their budgets during downturns. For fiscal 2008, however, the report shows an expected decline. Total balances in fiscal 2006 were $69 billion—a very healthy 11.5 percent of expenditures; in fiscal 2007 total balances were $62.7 billion—or 9.6 percent of expenditures. In fiscal 2008, balances are projected to decline to $47 billion—or 6.9 percent of expenditures.

The NGA’s Fiscal Survey of the States charts the downturn in state revenues and expenditures but Florida chooses to amplify this loss by modifying property tax rules that reduces revenue by $2.2 billion this year and an estimated $4.2 billion in 2010-11. This reduction on top of the falling revenue. Falling revenue means less money for schools and the property tax changes may cost school districts several billion more over the next several years. Vouchers remove another $170 million. Now Republican choice advocates want to remove even more money from public schools by expanding choice.

Not that people are particularly concerned about religion in schools. The Pew Research Center asked a sample of Americans in 2006 if “liberals had gone too far in keeping religion out of schools and government”. 69% agreed that they had, indeed, gone too far. One-third of respondents believe that the Bible should be the greatest influence on U.S. laws.

Public education sacrificed to political and religious ideology, from my perspective.

Movies We Have Seen

This weekend we saw

I Am Legend. Will Smith is a very likable protagonist in this latest adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel. The director does a remarkable job of creating a vacant Manhattan slowly deteriorating: weeds growing in Times Square, abandoned cars everywhere, skyscrapers devoid of people. Smith wandering around Manhattan managing a life alone with his very personable dog takes up the first third of the movie. The second third develops the suspense of those with whom Smith shares Manhattan and the last third descends into the standard cheap scare Zombie movie.

Something Marian and I have noticed recently: the number of movies with endings where main characters die and the movie transitions to some hopeless future. These movies include

No Country For Old Men based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. A novel focusing on character and fate, the protagonist is murdered in ambiguous circumstances and a primary character is unable to prevent murders of innocents or the obliteration of any sense of decency or order.

The Mist, directed by the director of The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption. The director actually changes the Steven King ending by killing his primary and most sympathetic characters. The movie ends with the protagonist sobbing about the death of his son and the most resourceful characters as the events illustrate that their deaths were completely unnecessary. The director, Frank Darabont, deliberately changed the ending from King’s far more hopeful end to make his movie bleak and hopeless.

Lions for Lambs, a cynical exercise in current events, where political ideology overcomes all inertia as it crawls inevitably towards its own short-term goals