<em>This editorial was originally published Sunday in KPC News.</em>
The running gag lately following announcement of a proposed $2 trillion federal infrastructure plan is that everything is infrastructure nowadays.
So let us take part, both for fun of hopping on the bandwagon but also to make a serious point — education is infrastructure.
Indiana should invest in it now, especially coming out of a disruptive pandemic.
Indiana received good news on Thursday, with the announcement that the state revenue forecast is about $2 billion higher than previously anticipated.
With that windfall of public money coming into the state, lawmakers should invest that directly back into public education.
Public education. Public education. PUBLIC education. PUBLIC education.
We repeat the phrase with various forms of emphasis here because we suspect the Indiana General Assembly will need the repetition in order to remember, as lawmakers seem to constantly confuse it with private education.
Public education is the one that educates 90% of Hoosier students. It’s the one that has been underfunded compared to the rate of inflation over the last 10-plus years. It’s the one that employs thousands upon thousands of teachers whose wages have not kept pace with competitors and the one that is bleeding staff at an alarming rate because of it.
It should be easy to remember. “Public money” and “public schools” both start with the same word, so it should be easy to match one to the other.
We recognize that “private” also starts with the letter P, but the rest of the letters don’t match up.
Again, we stress this point because past action proves that lawmakers are often confused on the point, such as in earlier this year, after they did, to their credit, choose to boost education funding across the state, but then devoted about one-third of the increase to private and homeschool options.
Not only do those education options account for only about 10% of Hoosier pupils, they are also held to a less rigorous standard than public schools, which — piggy-backing onto the earlier mention of teachers leaving the profession — is another part of the reason why educators are heading for the door.
Although we are of the opinion that the correct percentage of public money that should be spent on private education is 0%, failing that, we would at least encourage the state to utilize its found money to at minimum even up new education funding to its correct proportion at 90/10.
Senate Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, has signaled he would prefer the state instead do safe, boring, conservative things with it.
“This is not a time for us to grow government, but rather a time to make investments that can eliminate debt, pay down pension obligations to free up money that the state can use in the future,” Bray said.
We agree it is time to make investments that can eliminate debt, which is why the state should invest its money in education.
Bigger wages for teachers will immediately help reap slightly bigger income tax collections next spring, while better education for Hoosier students will generate economic dividends in the future.
The youth are the road to the future. They’re the pipeline to tomorrow’s workforce. They’ll create the bridge between today and the future economy.
Trust us, we’ve got plenty more infrastructure puns ready to go, if needed.
Instead, we’ll simply conclude by stating that, yes, education is infrastructure.
Invest in it now.
<em>Send comments to <a href="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</a>.</em>
