[Winona Online Democracy]
Responding to Leslie Hittner who said, in part:
"Frankly, I don't believe it's possible to put numbers to the social "net
assets" of K-17-and-beyond educational delivery systems."
Net assets is a business term. As Leslie Hittner suggests, perhaps we will
find it clear that 'net assets' is an incomplete metric to use in public
funding, especially under the current policy of placing a greater burden on
the local community. Public companies are measured in part by net assets,
but as a body, they also have a different world-view, one that is often
irrelevant to community and human development. Let us take 'net assets' at
face-value for the moment.
It would be interesting, at least to me, to know where students go when they
enter their careers, and what the outcomes are when a district-community
bears the significant financial burden of education, rather than supporting
education by the tax-paying body that benefits from educated individuals.
If graduates leave the district to work anywhere but the district, it would
seem the community is being entirely altruistic, correct at any cost. Such
altruism would seem to be a moral good, while a pure corporate view could
consider us a cheap resource for giving without a return, not looking for
some kind of reciprocal compensation.
If the trend is for the educated to leave the funding community, then it
would seem that Winona would eventually become financially impoverished so
that financing becomes impossible, and the system collapses, and the
collapse is likely to cause a catastrophic setback as the local economy goes
into a downward spiral to settle at a level lower than existed before the
initiation of the ideal. Costs of living rise, do they not?
Unlike a public company *who lives for the quarterly report and also can
also have a bail-out plan that benefits the CIOs and dumps the employees, a
community strives to endure and improve. A community should not have a
CIO-type mentality. Imagine looking at your children's welfare only in terms
of three-month periods and never longer, and to dump them when they are no
longer cost-effective. It is, in fact criminal, but it is the corporate Net
Assets Way.
If a public company were to take on the task of educating all of our
children, it would not survive without lobbying for all the tax advantages,
state and federal support they deemed necessary, and they would likely
succeed in that regard - at least given the current political state of
affairs.
Good schools can bring a community to form around the schools rather than
the other way around. A properly funded system can help it happen, be it tax
supported or a successful private enterprise in a demanding, competitive
environment. Competition and demanding clients are key in the later.
I would still fear for the CIO bail-out phenomena in a commercial schools
system. We cannot dump children as if they were commercial assets. I also
fear that the public is not particularly demanding, as evinced by some
tragic commercial enterprises leeching off of Winona today without a whimper
of public objection.
* I wrote 'who' above rather than 'what' because a corporation is considered
by constitutional interpretation to have certain individual rights but
without individual responsibilities.
jj (that is John J Stafford)
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