Creativity suffers when funds are scarce

By Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
May 1, 2002

In recent headlines from throughout the region, there are examples of high schools reaching for new levels of commitment for and from their students, and clear evidence that states' struggling economies depend largely on the education they give their youth. But there are many more examples of strapped states trying to maintain increasingly desperate schools -- not a good climate for innovation.

A private school on Montana's Blackfeet Reservation offers immersion classes in the tribe's native language, a step toward adding to the thinning ranks of elders who can still speak Piegan and toward saving the language and a large part of the culture from extinction. The immersion school concept started in Hawaii and is beginning to spread among native tribes throughout the West.

New schools in New Mexico and Colorado offer a high-tech emphasis, training junior high through grad school students in Albuquerque in blossoming fields of optics and photonics, and preparing Colorado high school students for computer-related fields.

Meanwhile, the responsibilities of mainstream schools seem to keep getting more complicated, while the resources dwindle.

A study by Idaho's Andrus Center, released in the midst of the most recent legislative session, said one of the keys to economic recovery for ailing rural Idaho was consistent investment in education.

Instead, legislators, faced with dramatically declining revenues, lopped $23.3 million from public school funds in mid-year, for the first time ever, and cut next year's budget requests by $13 million. They also cut 10 percent from the university system budget, eliminating 140 jobs.

Lawmakers said they had increased school funding enough in recent years to cover a temporary setback, but critics said it showed the state's declining commitment to education and a budget process that funds schools after most of the other bills are paid.

When the Great Falls, Mont., high school district advertised for a new principal, it received only eight applications for what the local paper said should be considered one of the state's premier administration jobs. Local school officials blamed the lack of enthusiasm on ever-increasing demands of the job that convince qualified teachers to stay put, and a salary too low to draw qualified applicants from elsewhere.

In Alberta, a simmering dispute between public school teachers and the government erupted in job actions that disrupted classes across the province. Teachers wanted more pay, and the government wanted to cut raises to offset lower revenue projections. Both sides agreed to arbitration two weeks ago and school life returned to roughly normal while a more civil process settles contract disputes.

And Utah's largest school districts planned to cut 160-plus jobs to cope with legislators' funding cuts.

Test scores in New Mexico schools shows the gap widening between Anglo and Hispanic students, prompting some observers to question whether public schools will ever be able to adequately educate low-income and minority students.

A Kids Count study concluded Colorado had the nation's fourth-highest rate of high school dropouts, exceeded only by Nevada, Arizona and Texas, although school officials questioned the accuracy of the results.

And if doing more with less weren't distraction enough, the school board in rural Joes, Colo., dropped its plan to require science classes to teach creationism after residents threatened to sue, and the Arizona House defeated 26-22 a bill that would have posted the national motto, "In God We Trust," in every public school classroom.

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