Republicans have wanted to get rid of the federal Department of Education pretty much since Jimmy Carter signed the legislation creating it in 1979.
What they don’t like: other than education as a general concept, they don’t like federal standards for education, which make it hard for states down South that want to teach, for instance, that slavery wasn’t such a bad thing, to, you know, get away with doing that.
Education equals “woke,” and even though your average Republican can’t define “woke,” other than it being something that is bad, they think eliminating the Department of Education will make us less “woke.”
The reality is, it will make us more broke.
Just looking at the three local school systems in our immediate area, in Augusta County, Waynesboro and Staunton, getting rid of the Department of Education translates to just under $10 million in federal money for our local schools that we’d have to otherwise account for.
- Augusta County, with 9,662 students in the K-12 public schools, is getting $5.05 million in federal dollars in the current fiscal year to go toward its $146 million operating budget.
- Waynesboro, with 2,825 students, is getting $2.9 million in federal funds this year to go toward its $52 million budget.
- Staunton, with 2,520 K-12 students, is getting $1.9 million from the feds toward its $43 million budget.
Doing the math, the Department of Ed money is anywhere from 3.4 percent to 5.6 percent of our local school budgets, which is to say, not insignificant.
The two obvious ways to account for not having this money going forward are: raising local property taxes, or laying off teachers.
- In Augusta County, where 73 percent of the voters just went for Donald Trump, who is leading the latest Republican crusade to eliminate the Department of Education, you’re either going to get a roughly six-cent property-tax increase if and when Trump is able to finally drown the Department of Ed, or in the area of 80-100 teachers and other staff have to get pink slips.
- Waynesboro went 52.0 percent for Trump to 46.3 percent for Kamala Harris. For going red, and having your vote lead to the elimination of the Department of Education, you just voted yourself into a local tax increase or having 50-60 teachers and other staff laid off.
- Staunton, which went to Kamala Harris, who got 55.5 percent of the vote in the presidential race in the Queen City earlier this month, bad news: you don’t escape a tax increase or losing 40-50 teachers and staff to the unemployment line.
These are real consequences.
Your taxes go up, or we get rid of teachers and support staff, and our kids get the short of the stick with them.
But hey, at least our schools will be less “woke,” even if you don’t know what “woke” means.
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Chris Graham
