The comments refer to a video on MISD's website featuring MISD Superintendent Jerome Stewart making a presentation regarding the state budget crisis and public education.
Dr. Stewart states that the state budget crisis and the lack of funding for public education is "not of our making."
Dr. Stewart is mistaken.
Here is the comment I received yesterday and my response.
Ms. Julie,
I am a parent who is greatly concerned about the decline in an already substandard education children are receiving in Texas. I was Googling various articles regarding this issue and ran across your blog.
I have been trying to understand how people can be so complacent about getting screwed. Our governor Rick Perry stole 3.2 billion dollars educational stimulus funds (our children’s educational funds) and doled it out to industries and the like. I watched a video where the school superintendent explained how the hole in the educational budget was created and he said, “…it was not a problem of our making.”
Now you are telling your readers that annually Midlothian (a school district that houses a couple of Fortune 500 industries and more) refunds an approximate 8 million dollars from their school budget back to subsidize these companies? Then I assume Midlothian ISD will turn around and ask for welfare from the State. Out of what budget will this money come? The State educational fund? Oh, you haven’t heard the news – they don’t have it!! Now what?
This is not a problem of our making”? Midlothian has money going into their school district because these nice Fortune 500 companies are paying their taxes – just like you and I do. Now Midlothian needs help because they sent all taxes these nice Fortune 500 companies paid to the school district back to these Fortune 500 companies to subsidize them. Now Midlothian ISD doesn’t have enough money so they have to go on the dole to keep the schools running. This is supposed to be good for the children of Midlothian? How long will this go on? Forever?
Are we all crazy or what? Do we like getting screwed? Or maybe we just don’t know the difference? “They” told us it was “good for us” – the screw job that is.
It was was fortunate that the bond passed or else all the children of Midlothian would have had to pay for our stupidity.
(name withheld by request)
p.s. I like C.S Lewis screwtape letters quote captioned below picture above. So fitting these times.
May 17, 2011 6:37 PM
Julie said...
Holy Cow! I am delighted to know there really are other parents out there paying attention to these underlying issues.
To answer your question, YES, for years Midlothian has been a "rich" district pretending to be a "poor" one.
The canned response of school board members and former MISD superintendent J.D. Kennedy to the issue of MISD wiring all that money each year to TIRZ was that MISD supposedly received money from the state that supposedly made it "whole."
The money that has been supposedly given in the past to MISD to make it "whole" was tax money that came from other school districts in Texas.
But you're correct -- it's the same thing that Rick Perry has done with the federal stimulus funds. The money is taken away from public education, and in this case, it's shifted to a corporation. TXI is paid to "manage" the TIRZ and decides how the money is spent.
The money MISD gives up each year to TIRZ sucks yet another hole out of public education in Texas.
It's a shell game. And public education -- and school kids -- in Texas lose.
When the MISD superintendent and the school board members then have to cut programs and lay off teachers because there's a lack of state funding for education, they refuse to connect the dots.
It is a fact. MISD helped create the problem of a lack of state funding for public education in Texas.
But I'm glad you realize the school kids of Midlothian shouldn't be blamed for this mess by being denied the schools and the education they need.
Let's hope these kids can someday be educated enough to outsmart the local industries and their corporate welfare scams, because this generation of leaders in Midlothian has not done so well.
Thank you SO MUCH for your comment!!!
Where are all those anti-tax guys when it comes to corporate welfare in Midlothian?
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