Educate or Bust?

October 26, 2011 at 12:29 PM

By CAROL VOYLES

We understand why Talbot County Council member Dirck Bartlett is concerned by the 2012 MSEA legislative priority that would require Talbot County to meet the level of maintenance education funding. In this difficult economy, budgets must be cut.

We can’t afford to cut unwisely. Education is an important factor for maintaining prosperity, attracting businesses, and growing our tax base. Perhaps we could better insure our prospects for the future by agreeing to a level of service that creates prosperity and committing to that effort.

There is no need to fear paying for the services we need to prosper. After all, we were more prosperous with higher tax rates during the three decades following WWII than we have been for the past three decades. We had a prosperous middle class, higher wages, affordable education, and more opportunity for advancement.

Decades of tax cuts haven’t met expectations. They haven’t created jobs as promised. We have less growth, less prosperity, more poverty, an enormous debt, and a crumbling infrastructure – all of this and taxes lower than we’ve had in eighty years.

We can’t afford to spend unwisely, but we also can’t afford a race to the bottom. There’s no doubt that the investment we’ve made in education has been good for Maryland, and is already priced very competitively with successful school systems throughout our nation. We’re ranked No. 1 in public education for three years in a row, No. 14 in funding per pupil, and No. 42 in spending as a share of income.

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