And sometimes he is. For example, yesterday he said that the Legislature ought to take the state Constitution seriously. He angrily opposed taking money -- $208 million dollars -- out of the school aid fund and giving it to state community colleges.
Patterson, who is a lawyer, says that as he understands the law, this isn’t constitutional. He has nothing against community colleges, but as he reads the document, they aren’t legally eligible for school aid money. Patterson urged his colleagues not to violate the law. “We’re known for quick fixes,” he said. “We’re known for playing games with the language,” he said.
However, as has been so often the case, a majority of his Senate colleagues couldn’t have cared less about the letter of the law. They were interested only in cobbling together a budget, so they can go home and campaign for re-election.
Those voting no weren’t trying to hurt community colleges. In fact, money had been set aside for them. But by doing it this way, the legislature can take away the money originally supposed to go to community colleges, and throw it into the usual vast deficit hole.
So elementary and high schools, which thought for a brief second that they had a little financial cushion, are being robbed, essentially. This infuriated a common sense non-profit group called Better Michigan Future, whose legislative coordinator said: “This budget agreement fails to even address the most modest reforms, and is failing Michigan families.” Well, of course it is.
What’s more, it is failing our future. If this state has a future that is better than our woeful present, it will come from today’s students.
But we let them down, time and again. In Detroit there are schools without proper textbooks and, sometimes, toilet paper.
Two kids got shot outside Mumford High School on the first day of class. That same morning, Robert Bobb, the Detroit schools’ Emergency Financial Manager, decided to ride a bus to school with a group of elementary school children. It showed up half an hour late.
Children are not our top priority, whatever lip service politicians may give to the idea. Five years ago, our lawmakers told the schools they couldn’t start classes till after Labor Day. Why?
To provide what Governor Jennifer Granholm called “a great economic tool” for the tourism industry. At the same time, she also says kids should be in school more days a year than now.
Things you say don’t have to add up in the political world. Wayne County Executive Bob Ficano says he is in favor of kids, too.
However, he is now proposing a huge cut in what have been widely recognized as excellent and highly effective juvenile justice services that have cut crime and saved both money and lives.
Why? To save money in the very short-term. Increasingly, we are becoming at all levels a people who live exclusively for now, and who couldn’t care less about our children or our society’s future.
And if that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what would.
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