SAN ANGELO, TX - Thursday evening at the Stephens Central Library, the Tom Green County Democratic Party hosted a public informational forum to talk about the issues facing public schools.
The meeting began with David Currie, Democratic Party chairman, explaining the purpose of the meeting.
“Tonight, we are talking about the truth about public education and school finance. Unfortunately, money doesn’t solve everything, but Texas is 48th out of 50 states on what we spend per student on education.”
Throughout his opening speech, Currie explained his own concerns about public schools.
“There is nothing wrong with private schools, but our tax dollars should support public schools,” he stated. “This is the future of our state. This is our future work force. We need to be better than [48th]. We need to pay teachers better than we do. I asked [Carol Ann] Bonds, who retired as a San Angelo ISD superintendent, to give a personal testimony on why she gave her life to public education."
During the meeting, Dr. Bonds shared a few personal stories about what she experienced as an educator.
Bonds told the story of a young boy who won first place in public speaking and debate at the National Forensic Competition. The young boy's debate teacher had noticed that he wore the same clothes every day. Thus, the teacher arranged for the young boy to wash his clothes at the club house either before or after school.
After some time and encouragement, the young boy finally admitted he was homeless, again, and living under a bridge because he had a mother with multiple addictions. Bond explained that the boy came up to her and said, “Dr. Bonds, I won this national speaking award because of my teachers, and I was able to stay in school.”
Bonds explained, “Public education is the promise of equal educational opportunities, no matter a child’s race, religion, or ability. It is a commitment and legal obligation to [have] high standards and high expectations for all students, including those with special needs, and those whose proficiency in English is limited. It’s a system of governments that ensures public accountability. It is a benefit to society by teaching democratic principles, common values that advance the larger common good and enable our society to function.”
Bonds noted that 87 percent of children in the United States attend public schools. Ten percent of children attend private schools, and three percent are homeschooled.
She added, “Over 60 percent of the children in San Angelo are on the Federal Food Program. With that said, we must have strong public schools for all of our children. In my opinion, this is the ticket out of poverty, to break the poverty cycle. The quality of experience and learning in public schools will determine, in my opinion, the quality of the future of the majority of our children.”
After Bonds finished her speech, Charles Luke, Vice Chair or Pastors for Texas Children, spoke about some possibilities of fixing the system.
Luke discussed a concept called wealth redistribution, or vertical equity. He explained, “We’re going to recapture some money from property wealthy school districts, and were going to give that money to property poor school districts.”
The purpose of this is to create an equitable school funding system.
“We should have something called horizontal equity," said Luke.
In regards to horizontal equity, Luke said this would mean kids, who roughly share the same IQ, similar economic status, and roughly having the same ability levels, would receive the same level of funding.
By definition from Economics Help, “Horizontal equity implies that we give the same treatment to people in an identical situation. Vertical Equity implies that people with higher incomes should pay more tax. Vertical equity seeks to tax in a proportional or progressive way, [and] people with more ability to pay should pay more tax. Vertical equity is important for redistributing income within society.”
Luke noted, “It all pushes towards one thing, and that is that we want every kid, regardless of where they are, where they’re born, what color they are, [or] what their economic situation is...in a decent society, we want those children to have similar educational opportunity.”
Luke said the only way [to live the American Dream] is to provide social mobility to every single person in society.
"Guess what does that better than anything else? Public education,” he said.
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