As a US Citizen who is soon to be 62 years of age, the one thing I’ve heard my whole adult life from the Educrats at every level is, “There is no way we can afford to operate our schools without Federal Government education money!” And I have watched people all around me, and at every level in the education industry, and at every level of government, just shake their collective heads in agreement as the cancer of Fed-Ed has metastasized throughout the whole body of the government schools. And it is now spreading outside of the government schools.
As a contrarian, who questions the “obvious truths” on a more regular basis every day, this became a subject that I wanted to investigate concerning its validity. I know, I know, HOW DARE I? This truth is above and beyond question! We MUST have our Fed-Ed money or the government schools will truly crash and burn to the ground around US and take our enlightened Society down with them. Or will they? As I started looking in to this unquestionable, and unquestioned, fact of the necessity of Fed-Ed money, I was surprised that no one dared to even ask any basic questions about the subject. So I decided to ask. Yes, yes, I totally understand the heresy of my inquiries, but I chose to ask anyway.
So, what kind of questions did I think needed to be asked and, in turn, answered? Well, the first question I never seemed to ever hear asked related to this whole subject is, “How much of our K-12 Education budget comes from the Federal Government?” And I was truly surprised at the number of people at all levels of government, and at all levels of the education industry, were totally clueless as to the answer to this simple question. Now why would that be? I can only guess it was because nobody ever asked them the question.
Amazingly in this day of these fabulous inter-web machines and the mountains of information available at our fingertips, it appears that I must be the first person who was ever curious about this? Well, this is what I found after investigating several different sources to cross-verify the numbers (because I’ve learned everything you read on the Internet isn’t always true), the National average percentage of K-12 education dollars from Fed-Ed is between 9.5-12%, depending on the State. In my State of North Carolina, in 2014, the number was <10.5%. WOW! It was quite a revelation to me that this was our entire K-12 EDUCATION budget that was Federal money. Is anybody else surprised by this low number? I can sure tell you that many of my State Legislators were. We’ll get back to this subject later.
With this information in hand, I now wanted to ask a second question related to this subject, “How much do our local and State education operations spend to comply with all of those “things” necessary to receive this Federal money?” Again, I was surprised that it seems I was the ONLY person who has ever even dared to ask such a question. So, from mid-2013 through all of the Common Core hearings in our State that I attended, as well at various other events, in to mid/late-2014, I asked a fair number of local education system leaders and administrators this question. From the cross section of these local leaders, School Board Members as well as various educrat administrators at different levels, the answers I received varied from a low of 18% to as high as 35+%. I hope you will let that sink in for just a minute.
So, by asking two very basic, simple questions related to the whole Fed-Ed money fallacy “that we MUST have to keep our whole government school industry from burning to the ground”, it appears I have uncovered something truly startling. The truth is, or at least it appears, that we are actually taking State and local dollars out of the classroom, and spending them on multiple wasted non-education related administrative and compliance costs, to accept the dollars we receive from the Federal government. Talk about another WOW moment! At this point, I have to ask one more question, “Does any of this make any sense at all?” This is an easy question to answer. NO!!
Where do we go from here? Well, here in North Carolina, my State Senator has taken the first step. He has filed a “Study” bill in the 2015 Session to start getting some answers to what I have found through the questions. Unfortunately, it was too late in the Session to get it moved forward. So he has assured me that he will file the bill early in the Session that is starting this week, so it can get fair consideration. What is the name of the bill? SENATE BILL 78- “A BILL TO BE ENTITLED- AN ACT TO STUDY THE FINANCIAL COSTS TO THE STATE AND LOCAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS TO RECEIVE FEDERAL EDUCATIONAL FUNDS AND THE COST TO THE STATE AND LOCAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS OF COMPLIANCE WITH FEDERAL MANDATES RELATED TO THE FUNDING.”
I know this is a very long title to try and answer some very simple questions, but unfortunately, it’s how government works at this point. This line of inquiry could undermine the whole structure of how and why the bureaucratic mess that is Washington, DC, and Fed-ED, continue to destroy our Country. We must understand that no matter which Party has been in “charge”, the bureaucratic machine in DC continues to grow and find new ways to justify its existence. What happens if someone in some State proves what they are doing to We The People? I believe it’s time we have answers and exposing the destruction done to US through Fed-Ed funding is a perfect place to start.
Now it’s time for some good news. In the 2017 Long Session of the North Carolina General Assembly, they PASSED SB-78 and in June of 2017 it was signed in to law by our Governor. In addition to the Study Section of the Bill, a 2nd Section was added establishing a new Joint Legislative Commission to investigate this study. I hope that in this Interim, between the 2017 Long Session and the 2018 Short Session, that this new Legislative Commission will begin to piece together this whole puzzle and reach the conclusion that is very obvious, unless the US Department of Education will “Block Grant” the dollars to the State with NO STRINGS ATTACHED, the State should tell them to keep the money. Please pray for the proper outcome.
God Bless America! And America, Bless God Again!
