The greatest threat to our public schools in NC | Eastern North Carolina Now
Marginal revenue does not equal marginal costs
One of the most dramatic changes impacting the public schools in our state, and in Beaufort County, is the loss of students. With a few exceptions in the large urban areas of the state, the decline in students enrolling in the public schools is having a relatively unrecognized impact on the resources available for those students who remain in the public schools sector.
The reason this impact is so significant is that each of those students lost means the amount of resources is less for those who remain, but the costs of educating those students does not drop proportionately with the decline in revenue. The technical statement of the phenomenon is: the decrease in marginal cost does not equal the decrease in marginal revenue. And it is at the margin that the threat is most pronounced. This would not be so significant if it was just one or two years, but the opposite has been true for several years. The hit comes every year and now seems to be getting worse as state priorities have changed with increases in scholarships that have the effect of making it easier for more parents to pull their children out of the public schools and enroll them in non-public schools. What kills the public schools is the cumulative impact of this decline in revenue while costs continue to increase, primarily as a result of increased salary costs in the public schools.
The Raleigh News & Observer recent documented the shifting trends in the public/private school enrollments: Click here to go to the original source.
What the N&O story does not document is the impact these trends have on small school systems. While larger systems can spread the impact over a larger population, thus ameliorating the impact on individual students, in small systems this is not as possible as in larger systems.
But beyond the cold hard facts of the difference in marginal costs and marginal revenue that impact the resources actually available, is the greatest threat: The ignoring of the problem by school boards and school officials. The game that is usually played is: “Just give us more…” and they usually get more, but the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost is greater than the relatively small increases allotted to the public schools. Moreover, the burden of this problem falls heaviest on those public schools in “poorer” counties that have less ability to make up for the difference between marginal costs and marginal revenue. Thus, the question becomes: How long can we endure this inequity?
Finally, to those who dismiss this threat to the economic wellbeing of our state by saying: “more money is not going to solve the problem…” we would simply respond: If not, why do so many people resist the reform in equity of how we fund public education? Money makes a difference. If it did not people would not mind losing it to others.
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Conservative Voter said:
( August 6th, 2024 @ 11:28 am )
I think a lot of local conservatives were supporting Folwell, and Robinson has the support but not the intensity of support that Folwell would have had. Robinson is great on the range of issues he has been working on, not liberal on anything I know of, but has not engaged on quite a few issues that conservatives care about. I think the more he engages on a wider range of issues, the greater intensity of support he will have.
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And yet he gets hardly a mention in the BO. Why is that?
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Policy positions on issues are always more important than a candidate's personality or personal life. I voted for and contributed to Dale Folwell in the primary. In the general election, "end the woke curriculum in the public schools" Mark Robinson is, by far, the better choice over "boys in girls locker rooms, restrooms, and sports teams" Josh Stein.
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So your voting for I took my wife for an abortion Mark? Hard to believe she couldn't keep her legs closed.
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HR- the gang of 5 are the duly elected commissions who happen to not agree with you very often. At times you make good points but you're a lousy politician. The 5 clearly dislike you and I don't blame them.
At some point you have to ask, what's the point? To do right by the people you serve, or just be a cranky old guy who manages to get re-elected but gets nothing done? You could be good at what you do. It's not too late. |
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Not today's NC Democrats, Bob. The three running statewide I mentioned earlier are as far left as any Democrat in America. Yes, it was different when we had NC Democrats like Senator B. Everett Jordan, Senator Sam Ervin, Governor Dan Moore, Lt. Govenor Jimmy Green, Congressman L. H. Fountain, State Senator Vernon White, State Senator Julian Allsbrook, and others like them, but all of them are gone and there are no longer others like them in today's leftwing NC Democrat Party. That was then, but his is now. The old conservative Democrats and business Democrats voted with their feet years ago, the latter now often becoming Chamber of Commerce Republicans.
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Just pointing out that a NC democrat would be a republican in many other states. Not Mississippi, but many others. Most on the BO are slightly right of Hitler so I get it that RC appears to be “flora the red” in a suit
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NC Democrats went pretty far to the left decades ago with elected officials like Terry Sanford and Jim Hunt, but nothing like their ultra-liberal canddiates today. You are clueless, Bob, or in denial.
The Democrat statewide ticket this years is really far to the left. For Superintendand of Public Insttuction their nominee was once the head of the far left Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the money bags for left and far-left causes in North Carolina. For Commissioner of Labor their candidate was a leader of the BLM/ANTIFA riots in Charlotte, and there is a photo of him leading a mob confronting a line of police with his fist in the air, no shirt, and his pants pulled half way down his ass exposing his underware (jailhouse style). The Democrat candidate for Supreme Court has never worked in a law firm or public legal offfice such as a prosecutor, and her only legal experience before being appointed by Cooper as a judge was being a lawyer for the radical far left Southern Coalition for Social Justice out of Durham. The NC Democrats are giving Vladimir Lenin a run for his money in terms of how far to the left they are. |
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Big Bob, You continue to convince me that you are not connected to reality. You are not woke, you are blind.
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Nobody elected to anything in NC, is ultra liberal.
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A liberal political agenda of "woke" from the ultra liberal mostly Roy Cooper appointed state board of educaiton and from DPI is a big factor driving parents to take their children out of public schools and place them in private schools or home school. A poll last year by the Locke Foundation found that 71% of North Carolina parents are concerned about political indoctrination of their children in the public schools. Local school systems best approach to retain students is to take firm control of curriculum, tell the wokesters in Raleigh to get stuffed, eliminate the woke while bringing back quality. That, in addition to being firm on discipline, would create public schools that parents want to send their children to.
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