Fitzsimon File

The newest battle over the future of North Carolina is being waged on an issue that used to not be controversial, the need to build enough schools to meet the growing enrollments of schools systems across the state. North Carolina faces a school construction crisis, with estimates of the backlog of needs for school buildings ranging from $6 billion to $9 billion.

Local school officials have been talking about the school construction problem for years and lately even some conservative county commissioners have been convinced that they need to pass bond issues or raise taxes to build schools faster.

School construction problems helped convince some state lawmakers to vote for the lottery this session, but less than half of lottery proceeds will go to counties to build schools. Most counties won’t receive enough lottery money to build even one school a year.

Half the state’s counties would be able to raise the local sales tax by half a cent under a bill that passed the House at the end of this past session. The Senate is expected to take up the plan when the General Assembly convenes in May.

School construction needs are statewide, but most urgent in the state’s major urban areas, where enrollment has increased by more than 10 percent in the last five years. 

Mecklenburg County officials are asking voters to approve a $427 million bond issue in November and are planning to put more bonds on the ballot in 2007, 2009, and 2011.  A new report by the Wake Education Partnership finds that Wake County will need to build as many as 80 schools by 2020.

All this is too much for the prominent backward-thinking tank in Raleigh, so it issued a report about the school construction crisis. The conclusions are that county officials are wasting money with their construction plans. There are no numbers about how much the anti-government crowd would spend on new schools but there are a series of recommendations.

Some of the proposals include redesigning schools to reduce the number of science labs and physical education facilities, teach many more classes over the internet, and get state officials to reconsider their position on tuition tax credits and lifting the cap on charter schools.

No one disagrees that school construction proposals should be scrutinized and local officials held accountable for proper planning and efficient use of taxpayer dollars or that school systems should take advantage of technology.

But limiting science labs and holding more and more classes over the Internet?  The report defends the online idea saying it would free students from the distractions of the classroom. Apparently the report’s author believes that going to school with other children is a negative experience.

The report is typical of the anti-government crowd and reflects its agenda that includes turning over public schools to the private marketplace. It is helping fuel anti-bond sentiment in Charlotte that threatens the quality of the school system.

It is time to confront the thinly disguised plan to dismantle public education that’s based on two principles, government is evil and all taxes are bad.  In some counties, the spread of the illogical anti-tax fever helped caused the school construction crisis in the first place, as some county commissioners refused to raise the money to build schools when they were needed. 

There are plenty of possible solutions to the school building crisis. Raise property taxes in counties like Wake, where taxes are low. The General Assembly should stop requiring counties to pay for a share of Medicaid costs. That would give counties $500 million a years to build schools, more than the lottery will provide.

Lawmakers could adjust the lottery legislation to give more money to school construction or they could stop leaving $100 million unspent and put it in the school construction fund.

The anti-government crowd may not want to hear it, but the people in North Carolina still support public schools and want counties to build new ones when they are needed. Let’s get on with a plan to build them and reject the calls to make our children and our communities suffer to serve some narrow and selfish agenda.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2005 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.