Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

The President’s “plan” for getting the economy on track is, according to scholars, probably illegal and according to economists far too little. Politically, it can only work if ALL States are willing to come up with billions of dollars and if the hurricanes miraculously avoid the southern states that provide the basis for the President’s support. For public education, the plan is a disaster.

The problem for public schools, which most readers have already figured out, is that in order to provide the $400/week of supplemental assistance for the balance of the year for those individuals who cannot find work the States must find $100/week from their coffers and the FEMA funds used for hurricane relief have to be devoted to provide the $300/week balance unemployment. The economic advisors to the President say the states should be able to come up with money fairly easily because, for the most part, they haven’t spend all of the money they were given in the first round of stimulus funding. To which SOME Governor other than NYS’s Cuomo needs to say: “Of course we haven’t spent that money! We budgeted it so that we could make it to the end of the year and hoped to use it to HELP us backfill the revenues we are losing and the additional money we will need to spend on schools to keep them afloat!”

The States and local governments need money. Period. The GOP and President want to take it away. End of Report.

The states lost revenue to the pandemic, they’ve incurred added costs because of the pandemic, and they can only operate with a balanced budget. These revenue losses were not their fault, they were completely unforeseen. And the State’s “failure” to spend the all the money provided thus far is evidence of sound fiscal planning and forward thinking. But we know from their track record that neither the GOP nor the President want the State and local governments to have the funds they need. Quite the opposite: the GOP’s 2017 tax cut included a provision that effectively penalizes states for offering decent wages and benefits to their employees, services to their voters, and a stronger safety net to those in need than the federal government offers.  And now, as States face daunting deficits because of the revenues lost to the pandemic, face increased costs to open schools due to the pandemic, and increased costs to operate all of their administrative offices due to the pandemic, the federal government, the only level of government that can generate funds, the President is mandating that they pay millions to the Federal government to augment a monthly payment that is 33% less than what is currently offered.

Here’s the question for the GOP and the President: what happens when the STATES and local school districts start laying of personnel to balance the budgets raided by the President? Who will pay THAT bill?