SPECTRUM: State’s budget woes bring heartache

I consider myself a public servant charged with this great and noble cause for an informed and critical thinking public. I work every day to invest in my students with the power of the pen. We live in difficult times, and I urge our state, borough and district officials to share with me in this moral contract with my community to improve lives.

The state, the borough and the school district face severe budget shortages. More money means more choices; less money means fewer choices. I call it the law of advantage. That is a hard sell in a world where it’s “my way” every day, all day long.

Our district faces an $11 million shortfall. Without increased support from the borough and state, the district stands to lose many teachers, support staff and programs. As much as I want to extol the wonderful things happening in our schools — and there are too many to count — I can only wonder what in the world is happening to the institution of intellectual freedom I have given my life to. My heart breaks.

I anxiously read about these maneuvers to bridge the deficit gap. The state plays a shell game with the education budget: now you see it, now you don’t. For example, Senate Bill 96 wants to help districts “do more with less” by subsidizing virtual education at the same time admitting that “direct spending in the classroom correlates with better academic results.” It’s a smoke and mirrors, dog and pony show that ultimately reduces teacher-student contact and erases the enduring notion that a public education is just that, public, and worth priority.

Somewhere along the way, in our drive to do things “my way,” we have come to believe that everything is a right more than a privilege. An educated public is a necessity for a civilized and open society. A public education is not an individual right or a personal choice. It’s compulsory. Moreover, it is a community’s responsibility.

Public education acts as both the heat beneath America’s melting pot and as the spoons that keep it from burning. It provides not only a common set of learning goals but also shared experiences. These shared experiences help create school spirit, a sense of camaraderie, and community. It establishes cultural norms.

The majority in our community has attended public schools and public universities. It binds us together in a web of similar skills, principles and familiarities. Together we’ve lined up for recess, brought birthday cupcakes, squirmed on risers during concerts, read aloud in reading groups. We have all read Steinbeck and Shakespeare, written a three-point essay. We have struggled with fractions, inequalities, the Pythagorean theorem, and managed to remember on the final that time equals distance divided by speed.

I believe that the state’s budget priorities take this phenomenon of America’s public schools for granted. The notion that we can do more with less is erroneous and illogical thinking. Less means less; it can never include more.

Our district prides itself on the plethora of choices offered students. Students choose to go to one school in the morning, and another in the afternoon. They make their schedules. Our sports teams aren’t even made up of students who go to the same school anymore — some go to Mat-Su Central, and others attend Career and Technical High. It’s a game changer in more ways than one, and a costly one at that — both with financial consequence and school spirit confusion.

As our institutions follow the speed of Twitter, it behooves us to consider efforts to fund an unreasonable amount of choice. The ones losing the most are the ones serving the most — public, comprehensive, brick and mortar neighborhood schools. The student to teacher ratio for large schools will have increased by four students in two years. This is not only unprecedented; it is unreasonable.

I am alarmed. When our leaders work to personalize a budget to meet everyone’s desires so districts can do “less with more,” the response ultimately leads to public money going to private hands, claiming choice in the form of grants or reimbursements. This is neither a privilege nor a right. It is dead wrong.

For me, the cuts to public education reflect a greater loss than the inappropriate distribution of cash. Regarding high-interest investment, the value of an educated public cannot be understated. Failing to fund fully public schools represents its loss of value and replaces this American wonder with the self-selected segregation of ideas and people. And, as much as I try, I can’t help but take it seriously, or personally.

We all should.

Emily Forstner is a teacher at Wasilla High School.