The impact of the economic crisis on US education
The 1981 federal budget dollar allotted 24 cents to "defense" and 15 cents to education. Each year since, "defense" allocations have gone up at the expense of the education share. The proposed 1985 federal budget dollar designates 29 cents for "defense" and 11 cents for education.
- US Congress approved education
Schoolchildren in the United States, from five year old students in kindergarten to 17-18 year old graduates of high school, are victims of the mounting economic problems in the richest capitalist nation in the world The dollar value of education funding has been eaten away by continuing inflation. Large chunks have been bitten out of school programs by the federal government which gives priority to military expenditures and to the drive to bolster profits by attacking the living stards and wage levels of working people.
paY-OFFS N NO CUT BACKS funds of 13.7 billion dollars in 1980, 15 billion in 1981, 14.2 billion in 1982 and 15.1 billion in 1983. Last year 21 billion dollars was needed merely to offset the 25 percent loss in purchasing power since 1980.
- The federal contribution to total school funding was 9.2 percent for 1979-80 but dropped to 6.4 percent for 1982-83.
To make this situation even worse, there has been a change in the way federal monies are given to the states. fore 1982, laws passed by the US Congress mandated specific aid to programs for handicapped children, women's edu-
IN EDUATION cational equity, libraries, bilingual pro-
FEE
NO LAYOFFSPOR LOS NINOSIST RICT 1
NO CUT ASKS
Evelyn SELL
Schoolchildren pay for capitalist priorities through overcrowded classrooms, loss of supportive services, old or unsafe buildings and restrictions on programs for students with special needs.
Financing for the almost 16,000 separate school districts comes from state governments, local city and county bodies, and the federal budget. The trend is for states and local bodies to contribute almost equal amounts, and for the federal share to drop each year.
Education remains the largest single item in state budgets but, with the recession hitting some areas harder than others, there is great variation from one state to another in per pupil support. The range during the 1982-83 school year was from 1,546 dollars in Alabama and 1,919 dollars in Mississippi to 2,727 dollars in California and 4,303 dollars in New York up to a top of 6,301 dollars in Alaska.
Local areas are also affected differently by losses in tax revenues due to plant shutdowns, unemployment and variations in property values. The only taxes citizens normally have direct control over are local ones for education. International Viewpoint 18 June 1984
This has channeled revolts against rising taxes into votes against issuing school bonds to finance local education needs.
Inequities in local funding exist even in states like California where a court ruling mandated the state to equalize school spending in order to significantly narrow or entirely eliminate the huge gaps between schools in wealthy districts and those in poor ones. In mid-1983 (nine years after the court order) the rich Beverly Hills district was spending 2,772 dollars per pupil while the poor Baldwin Hills district was spending 1,842 dollars.
The federal share of school revenues is the smallest and is shrinking; it accounted for about 7 percent for the 1982-83 school year. At the same time, however, Washington is playing a growing role in determining how local resources are used. The federal government offers "matching funds," for example, to establish or maintain particular programs. Local bodies are thus encouraged or discouraged to adopt or to drop programs based on federal incentives.
Merely looking at figures does not give a true picture of the complicated intermeshing of federal, state and local school
Some facts, however, clearly show how national administration polgrams, asbestos control, etc.
The Education Consolidation and Improvement Act went into effect October 1, 1982 lumping together some 28 dif. ferent programs and giving "block grants" to the states. No strings were attached to these block grants and the amount of funding was based on a head count of the 5-to-17 year old residents in the state.
At least 80 percent of the funds were supposed to go to local districts according to a weighted formula devised by each state. The new grant approach was touted as a way of cutting down paperwork and increasing local flexibility in meeting changing needs. According to testimony at Congressional hearings, the states used block grants to buy equip ment instead of filling needs such as hiring teachers lost through local budget cuts.
The switch to block grants actually resulted in less total funding to the states: from 733 million dollars in 1980 down to 512 million in 1981 and 455 million in 1982. The state-devised distribution formulas gave less than 5,000 dollars to each school district - a drop in the bucket!
The most damage was suffered by urban school districts under court-ordered or voluntary racial desegregation plans. Block grants enriched the 13 most sparsely populated states with fewer non-white and high-need students.
The greatest losers were the 25 states and the District of Columbia (seat of the federal government) which have big urban centers with high concentrations of lowincome families, large numbers of minority children and many "high cost" students: poor, handicapped, non-English speaking, etc.
The 30 largest school districts lost al-
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lion dollars, then decreased to 157 mil on so-called "friends of labor."
most half their federal funds; nearly half the nation's minority children are in these hardest hit districts.
One of the 28 programs swallowed up in block grants was a loan plan to pay half the costs of removing hazardous asbestos material from schools. In mid-
Environmental that 8,600 public schools built before 1972 contained asbestos, exposing over 3 million students and teachers to this
According to a different study of only 11 states by the Service Employees International Union, at least 3.24 million students and almost 650,000 school employees may be inhaling cancerous asbestos fibers. The union estimates that one in every ten school buildings contains the hazardous material.
In addition to the harm caused by block grants, the federal administration has slashed funds for programs. In 1981, 1 billion dollars was cut from the school lunch budget. Across the US schools raised meal prices or dropped lunch pro-
A Washington lobbying group reported that 3.2 million children were forced to go without lunches during the 1981-82 school year. Department Agriculture reported about 3.2 million fewer children bought school lunches due to federal cuts. Cuts harm children's heath
This year the School Breakfast Proreaching only one-third of the This program lost 20 percent of its federal funding over the last
500,000 fewer children eating breakfast in school com-
Schoolchildren went hungry while the was paying farmers not to produce crops and the federal administration was refusing to release surplus food stored in warehouses (such as 1.3 billion pounds of dry milk, 900 million pounds of cheese and 500,000 pounds of
Cutting down farm production, buying up crops and storing foods (or dumping food into the seas are methods used by lion for fiscal year 1981 and less than 140 million dollars for the current fiscal year. Federal funds now support only 18 percent of the nation's programs for children with limited English proficiency - at a time when the school population has a rising number of Latino and Asian children. In 1983 about 3.6 million students had limited English proficiency.
Another method used by the federal administration to limit education expenditures is to issue new eligibility restrictions reducing the number of students. In 1975 the US Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act to aid the nation's ten million disabled children by providing free, appropriate public education.
children were to be "mainstreamed" into regular classrooms instead of being kept in institutions or segregated from their peers in separate rooms.
the US Department of Education revised the regulations in order to dilute this law but protests from parents and educators pressured Congress to reject the
The courts have helped government attacks on school employees. Jose School District (eighth largest in California) filed for bankruptcy claiming it was locked into a teachers' tract it could not afford. On August 19, 1983 a court ruling allowed the school board to get out of contracts with the San Jose School Employees Association. The unions immediately appealed to a federal district court.
Such anti-labor maneuvers weigh more heavily on women since about 70 percent of the nation's teaching force is female. The system of block grants has eroded the gains won through the 1974 Women's Educational Equity Act. school breakfast and lunch programs have a special impact on women who head almost half of the country's families living in poverty.
Although all aspects of education have deteriorated as a result of the capitalist crisis, President Reagan has been targeted as the major villain. Both the 1.7 million-member National Educa600,000-member American Federation of
I'm a member of United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), the largest NEA local in the US with 18,000 members. Last year UTLA carried out its most intensive political campaign effort ever in order to oust school board members who had tried to balance the district's budget by cutting teachers' health benefits and halting the system of yearly salary in-
UTLA officers were elated when the "pro-teacher, pro-student" backed by the union won the election. The new board members publicly repeated their commitments to fight for two major points in the union's contract de-
Four months later, the new "liberal" board members were put to the test during the actual contract negotiations -and they failed to live up to their promises. UTLA leaders cried, "Betrayal!"
A similar betrayal will take place at the national level if Mondale is elected. Vote-catching promises are blown away by the storm whipped up by slipping profit margins, increased foreign competition,
US imperialism's war moves against anticapitalist revolutionary movements in Central America and the Caribbean as well as other parts of the
Gains for education can only be won through independent political action and oppressed minorities, women, youth anc working farmers. The movement against nuclear weapons and US interventionism has put forward a slogan linking military expenditures to the worsening con-
"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Pentagon has to hold bake sales to buy weapons!" parents hold bake sales to raise money needed by local schools while their tax monies are used to support the growing US military machine. SWEDEN.
La Highschool students the federal government to keep market prices up and increase the profits of agrithroughout their lifetime. A recent study by Pennsylvania State University's Nutrition Education Center found an alarming rate of dietary-related anemia among school-age children. Anemia decreases motivation, diminishes concentration and decisively impairs learning.
have decimated special programs launched by the 1968 Bilingual Education Act. The law manschool districts with sizable numbers of limited-English-speaking students
Federal funding for bilingual education, teacher training and classroom materials.
Funding peaked in 1980 at 167 mil-
Teachers (AFL-CIO) dump-Reagan campaign dorsed the Democratic candidacy of Wal-
NEA President Mary Futrell expects 700,000 teachers to volunteer as Mondale campaigners. NEA set a goal of 4 million dollars to be collected by its political action committees to support presidential and Congressional candidates in 1984. * A Mondale AdmineraFutrell stated, tion will not pass the buck on educational
Educational reform to help students, teachers and working class parents will not come from either Democratic nor Republican administrations history has amply proven. I recently witnessed the futility of pinning hopes strike