Flattening Florida children’s chances for success

Al’s Loupe

Flattening Florida children’s chances for success

By Alvaro F. Fernandez
alvaro@progresoweekly.com

After reading a recent Fred Grimm column in The Miami Herald, I get an odd feeling on the new parameters set by our leaders in Tallahassee. A sort of educational paradigm shift seems to be taking place. Because A’s and B’s in school may no longer be what we’re looking for – that’s if you believe some of our geniuses in Florida’s capital.

My little girl has been taught that her job at this stage in her life is to study – to do it to the best of her ability. If the results are A’s and B’s in school – excellent!

But after digesting the Grimm column… should I worry that I am doing a disservice to my home state? For asking my daughter… to study hard!?

You see in Florida we have a program called Bright Futures scholarships, which reward A and B students entering college. But, as can be expected, it costs the state money to maintain these scholarships. I also contribute monthly to the Florida Prepaid College Program, which is supposed to guarantee my daughter a college education down the line at any Florida public university she qualifies for, at today’s prices.

In other words, I am helping fund education today, but at the rate our leaders are slashing educational budgets there may not be enough money to let all our straight-A students into college in the not so distant future.

Grimm’s column uses metaphors to depict the state of education in Florida. The most telling being of those monster vehicles we see on television rigged with five-foot tall tires (please stop and consider how big those tires are…) flattening a Toyota Corolla.

Grimm likens Florida politicians, charged with our children’s educational future, as the monster vehicles. Our children… the Toyota Corolla.

Add to this reality a national storyline now pushed by Rick Santorum, republican presidential hopeful, who has likened a college education (for some) as a type of snobbery or elitism. And one starts to wonder what the hell is going on.

Here are some of the statistics provided by Grimm in his column:

• Florida legislators will subtract $289.3 million from higher education in this year’s budget.
• It’s the fifth year in a row that Tallahassee cuts educational funding.
• Without counting this year’s almost $300 million slash, Florida has sliced almost 30% since 2007.
• Add to those cuts the fact that from 1989 to 1992 the system was reduced by 26.2 percent. And amount that was never made up.

All these cuts are happening while enrollment in Florida schools keeps going up. (For example, in the past 18 months enrollment has increased by 18,000 students.) And politicians have found it necessary to keep pushing up the price of a college education as a result. So higher education, especially at our better universities, is now a luxury for families that can afford it. Therefore it’s no surprise that “the average annual family income of University of Florida undergrads is $100,000,” reports Thomas Breslin, a Florida International University professor.

And it is no wonder then that politicians are complaining that there are just too many A students in Florida. If it was left up to some of them, I believe they’d favor establishing a quota of who can get the higher grades… And it seems that those kids would have rich parents who can afford to pay for expensive schools – our current trend.

Let’s compare

In 1980, Florida spent $169 millions for prisons in the state. In 2010, that figure had risen to $2.4 billion. Remember, during this period of time, funding for education has decreased – dramatically.

Let us now take into account how new Florida prisons are funded. They are something called “lease revenue bonds”. To give you an idea, currently there is $721.7 million in prison bonding debt outstanding requiring future payments of approximately $1 billion when debt service and interest payments are included. Who do you think benefits? Usually bonding firms close to certain politicians…

Finally, there’s a push by our legislators, led by Governor Rick Scott, to privatize the state prison system. Prisons, in case you don’t know, are very expensive to construct, but very profitable once built. The result of the new system being pushed will result in costs to be incurred by the public, while the profits will be private.

To finish, there’s a correlation between education and prisons. Statistics will tell you that the more educated you are the better your chance of landing a job and the less likely you are to end up in jail.

But with Florida building more prisons than ever, the politicians and their friends may want to make sure that those prisons are full all the time. Remember, there’s big money to be made. And what better way to assure the success of this prison industrial complex than to convince boys and girls around Florida that they’re helping the state by not chasing those A and B grades in school.