New York Post: A friend in Jesus: New York’s new Catholic PAC
“Finally the Catholic Church will have a voice in Albany commensurate with our numbers and with the contributions our church makes to our state and our communities,” says Robert Flanigan, co-founder of Educate LLC, a company that coaches schools in technology. “Especially in education.”
In essence, the new PAC is an attempt to restore some sanity to education policy by rewarding success and punishing failure in a state capital that does just the opposite.
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In short, while Albany may debate the Dream Act, it won’t mean anything without the grammar and high schools that put kids on a path to college.Here’s the problem. New York’s traditional public schools already enjoy the highest funding per pupil in the nation, while Catholic schools are closing.
Still, when it comes to education, there’s another fact at play here: Many would be happy to see the Catholic schools fold because each day they show up their public-school counterparts by demonstrating that black and Latino kids can learn and achieve in the right school.
All while saving New York’s taxpayers billions.
I pray this has an effect. It’s a social injustice that parents who choose to save the public school system hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions* by not sending their children to public schools don’t have a single incentive from NYS to do so. Schooling is an often overlooked battle for the future of our country. If you’re perfectly happy with yet another generation of Catholics who vote for the Obamas of the world and can’t tell you who the second person of the Trinity is, then by all means just sit back and let New York State continue to waste your money on efforts that only make the school system worse. If, however, you’d like to help give parents a choice to say “NO!” to the secular humanist brainwashing of the socialist regime all while horribly failing at the only goal they’re set out to accomplish (producing widget-makers), then it’s time to take a stand and push back.
NOTE 1: 5 children x 12 years of public school x 20k per year = $1.2M [updated thanks to Sid]
Even setting aside non-monetary benefits to society, the remote monetary benefit to society is even greater than the above formula as the difference between contributing a wealth-creating, tax-paying, citizen to society is exponentially more beneficial than someone who becomes a drain.
NOTE 2: This post in no way is intended to denigrate those families who make use of the public school system. There are sundry scenarios in which the public school system is the best option for a family and if the family is strong and the parents do their job, the children will not become cogs in the socialist regime.
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FYI… The figures quoted in NOTE 1 are incredibly out of date. $10K per student per year would be a huge bargain; it’s off by a factor of two.
In the Rochester area (Monroe County, NY), the median yearly cost per student in a public school district is very close to $20,000 / year. (Source: 2014 Rochester Business Journal Schools Report Card issue, Jul 11, 2014″. I didn’t crunch the numbers, but the mean is similar. Woefully few people have any idea how much taxpayer money (local, state, federal … it all comes from the same source ultimately) gets spent on public education. And, since they do such a good job with K-12, the President wishes to have “free” community college as well. Super.
If your local school district does not have completely open “school choice” (vouchers, education savings accounts, $-fixed per pupil, not school, whatever), I would encourage a “NO” vote at the coming budget vote. It’s mostly symbolic of course, but it’s better than just paying without question.
Thanks, Sid. I updated the post with that info.
http://lohud.nydatabases.com/database/2015-16-school-budgets
yep – my district spends over $20k / child. Enrollment is dropping 2% next year, but spending is going up 4.5%. Insanity!