by David Safier
From the Arizona Guardian (subscription only):
Health care and child care facilities will have to pay thousands more to be licensed in Arizona under new fee schedules released Tuesday that are intended to make businesses shoulder the regulatory cost.
The largest child care centers will see their licensing fees increase 90 times over, while small behavioral health group homes will pay quadruple their current costs.
Across the board, the facilities that care for Arizona’s youngest, oldest and most infirm will over the next three months go from paying some of the lowest regulatory costs in the Western region to the highest. Advocates say that's likely to increase the supply of unregulated care and raise costs as the fee increases are passed on to families.
Officials with the state Department of Health Services say the fees, which take effect Jan. 1, are necessary to recoup budget cuts under a new funding scheme approved last month by Gov. Jan Brewer and GOP legislators.
The fiscal 2010 spending plan strips about half of the licensing division’s $9 million budget and gives DHS the authority to make up the rest by hiking regulatory fees.
(If this is old news, sorry. I was out of town. It's news to me.)
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I’ll say that many if not most people want the best education for children and don’t prefer private over public schools or charter schools over either.
I oppose government schools because I think that government run schools separate the reward for a good product (in this case education) from the process. I think this results in a monopoly system that produces far poorer education that a system where that monopoly doesn’t exist.
As for the founding fathers and education, it is my sincere belief that the vast majority of people who find the current government school system wanting do think that it produces poorly educated children not because “they did it better in the olden days”.
Let’s be honest though:
A significant number of legislators favor private/charters schools to the extent that they philosophically would prefer that there were no public schools at all. They would prefer that all kids (or their parents) fully pay for their education with zero tax dollars being spent at all. Kids who can’t afford it could find a master to apprentice themselves to, or just go to work hearding cattle or picking fruit or something where literacy may not be a requirement. And of course in this view the female half of the students don’t need an education anyway, they just get married young.
Hey, it worked fine in the eighteenth century right? The truth is that their fascination with the way the Founding Fathers did things extends way beyond what most people think it does.
Since they can’t actually get there up front, suffice to say they are no friends of public education in Arizona and anything that defunds, damages, demoralizes, defeats, denigrates or devalues public education in Arizona is not only in their view a necessary step, but in fact a good step forward.
Somehow, the infinite wisdom of destroying public education has taken a new and particularly savage turn for the worse. Our governor has very recently enacted laws that have essentially stripped teachers of any hint of job security. Districts are now prevented from using a system that gives preference to seniority when it comes to laying off, as well as calling people back to work. They are also now allowed to lower salaries of any employees, at any time, for any reason what-so-ever. They previously needed to apply a salary decrease evenly and equitably to all teachers, as well as by a certain date. Not anymore!Districts also are free to withold contracts from their employees for as long as they like. This means teachers could essentially not know if they have a job until the day before the school year starts.
Really? REALLY?
I am an award winning educator who absolutely LOVES teaching. I am the kind of teacher you want teaching your kids because you would feel secure in the fact that I would go out of my way for your child, and every child in my classroom. I am also the teacher you want in your district because I am the teacher who teaches the kids you want out of your childrens building–the drug dealers, gang bangers, bullies, thieves, disrupters…yep! I make your childs classroom a whole lot easier to learn in. But, I LOVE this population!
So, what would ever become such an issue that I would leave it? Answer: being treated with an intolerable level apathy and disrespect. Teachers have been scapegoats for as long as I can remember; I knew that coming in to the field. Compromising the safety and security of knowing whether I’ll be able to pay my mortgage and car note, have electricity, and buy food crosses a line. I came to Arizona from a union state, took a $7,000 cut in salary and the equivalent to another 7,000 in benefits for my family. Loving my job and my students diverted my focus from what I lost. Unfortunately, I can’t love a job that has made it abundantly clear that I will be a liability at a certain point in the pay scale; therefore expendable.
Unfortunately, your kids lose once again. Teachers at the bottom of the pay scale are teachers new to the profession. Very few new teachers have any classroom management skills. If your child’s building has a predominence of first and second year teachers, your child’s education is compromised. Not only that, if all the experienced teachers have been let go because the district simply doesn’t want to pay the salary of a veteran when they could get two new teachers for the same amount of money, novice teachers will have no one to guide them in acquiring the skills it takes to run a classroom safely and effectively. Good Luck, Arizona! I’m going back to Wisconsin where we are only moderately discriminated against.
This post just shows how much better news can be that you pay for. I read the Arizona Republic version of this and they completely omitted any mention of how the license fee hike was authorized.
Yeah – that was the article reflecting how well the current legislative ‘leadership’ is simultaneously looking out for small business owners, the children and the elderly.
Way to screw pretty much everyone in one shot. Not to mention all of the working parents and caretakers who will also absorb the increase in costs.