What Education Means to Florida

The Obama administration enacted a $787 billion economic stimulus plan. The stimulus funds appropriated $48.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund to help keep and create jobs and advance education reforms over a period of two years. According to Ed Hornick of CNN, "the program dedicates $39.8 billion for public elementary, secondary and higher education and other services. Another $8.8 billion will go for other activities such as public safety or government services."

Florida has had budget cuts in education for the past two years. With the election of Governor Charlie Crist the people of Florida hoped for a change in education, but soon realized that their hopes were short-lived.

During Charlie Crist's campaign for governor of Florida, Crist promised merit raises of unprecedented size for teachers, up to 10 percent a year, and said he saw no reason why top public school teachers shouldn't make $100,000 a year or more.

Unfortunately for Crist, the recession has put a hold on his promises to increase pay and has forced him to make some tough economic decisions against Florida's educational program.

According to The Pine Hills News, "A provision in the package approved by Congress last week requires states to maintain certain funding levels, in order to qualify for more education money. But there’s a waiver provision, and Crist hopes the U.S. Department of Education will take into consideration all the factors that have caused him and state legislators to cut state spending in the past two years."

The waiver that Crist has submitted to the U.S. Department of Education allows Florida to reduce the spending of the stimulus package in certain areas such as education, but only to the extent of the amount that Florida has reduced in other areas.

Although Florida is spending money in education, they are still reducing the original amount of money which is given to the Florida Department of Education. This reduction in money should still be considered a budget cut due to the fact you are reducing the amount of predetermined money given and displacing it elsewhere for other purposes.

“Florida’s investment in education funding has yielded positive results and recognition, including Education Weekly’s ranking Florida 10th in the nation,” wrote Crist. “These dollars will allow us to continue providing a quality education for Florida’s 3.2 million K-20 students.”

Currently the stimulus money is being used to fill existing budget gaps such as teacher salaries. Although the money does save the jobs of numerous amounts of teachers, nothing is being done to advance education. With the way Florida is spending money on education, they may be ranked 10th in the nation for now, but with no advancements in education Florida may not be ranked 10th in the nation two years from now when there is no longer any money to provide for teacher salaries.

According to Ed Hornick, "some states that used the funds to fill existing budget gaps could face a crisis when the money runs out after 2010. And the Department of Education has chastised certain states for their stimulus funding programs and warned them that they risk their chances at getting other DOE grants down the road."

Filling in existing budget gaps may fix the problem for now, but in return you risk losing DOE grants down the road. Those grants could be used to maintain teacher salaries when stimulus money runs out and even possibly help to increase teacher salaries. To risk these grants over filling a budget gap in the current system is to great of a loss for the future. There are other alternatives that can be used to fill these budget gaps such as the $300 million cushion the Florida legislature has created.

Rep. David Aronberg says, "using the stimulus money on reoccurring costs will simply make the budget problem worse in the future." Teacher salaries are a reoccurring cost that will have to be paid each year. The stimulus plan is only suppose to last for two years, which in turn will leave the same problem in the future. If Florida follows the Department of Education's rules on how to spend the stimulus money, Florida will qualify for DOE grants after the stimulus money runs out allowing Florida to access the teacher salary issue.

By focusing on teacher salaries, Florida is only fixing current issues in education instead of focusing on the future. Although ignoring teacher salaries will create a large amount of layoffs, putting money into renovating schools, updating technology, and saving programs will help the students.

-Alonzo Prendergast