Steal from the poor and give to the broke

Steal from the poor and give to the broke

Editorial

So call us cynical. At least we’re in good company.Observing the penchant most of us have for absurdity, Emerson once wrote that “common sense is as rare as genius.” And while most of us can rattle off dozens of examples of his truism from our daily lives, it’s the Ohio Legislature which provides us with today’s evidence that human nature really hasn’t changed very much since Emerson put pen to paper a century-and-a-half ago.As the downtown big-wigs hunker down for what’s sure to be a good old-fashioned round of arm twisting over proposed budget cuts in the – already limited – funding for higher education, we can’t help but feel it’s gonna be you-know-who left without a chair once the proverbial music stops.Under the auspices of solving Ohio’s primary and secondary education funding woes, House Bill 650, which cuts the budgets of all of Ohio’s public universities by .5 percent for fiscal year 1999, was passed two weeks ago by the Ohio House of Representatives. This nearsighted decision is the Legislature’s disingenuous answer to the Ohio Supreme Court’s March ruling that the manner in which Ohio funds its public schools is unconstitutional, and must be changed.Let’s review: Ohio’s primary and secondary schools are suffering from an inequality in funding. This is fairly unassailable. It’s this inequality, we’re led to believe, which is one of the sources of the woefully lacking educations being doled out to schoolchildren in some of Ohio’s poorest school districts. Again, no argument here.Therefore, according to the Ohio Legislature, the logical remedy is to cut money from one aspect of our public education – our public universities – and redistribute these funds to another portion of our public education, our primary and secondary schools. To quote Hamlet, “Aye there’s the rub!”For our part we feel this is a ridiculous and unwarranted attack on what should be the crown jewel of our education system: Ohio’s public universities. Remember, the damage done higher education by the legislative budget-cutters of the early nineties has scarcely been forgotten. And now we rest squarely in their cross hairs once again. Great.It never ceases to amaze this editorial staff just how stingy Ohio citizens seem to be – or the Ohio Legislature believes them to be – with their tax dollars. At the very least one would think that the highly salient issue of funding for primary and secondary schools – it’s for the children! – would tug enough heartstrings to loosen a few wallets. We won’t, however, be betting our tuition money on any eleventh hour reprieve provided by the good citizens of Buckeye country. Everyone’s for education in the abstract, but truly rare is that individual willing to stand by that support when it will ultimately be reflected in their paycheck stub. It’s for these reasons that we look to the future of Ohio’s students with apprehension. Is the day really so far off when the entire spectrum of our education system – K through college – is substandard?Manipulating the limited funds available for the totality of public education in Ohio is the height of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. We’re all going down, it’s just that some of us are sinking faster than others.