With last week’s Question of the Week, we asked readers to weigh in on a suggestion by Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton to turn away federal education funding to give the state more leeway in overseeing education.
Here are some of the responses we received.
Trash the idea, not the funding
Should Tennessee refuse federal education funding?
This is one of the most ludicrous proposals that I have heard in a long time. Currently, Tennessee is 42nd out of 50 states in education funding. We have no universal pre-K. We have class sizes too large for students to get the attention they require. We have students struggling to pass the third grade reading/language test. We have school buildings that need repair and we have teachers being paid less than the other states.
If Speaker Sexton thinks we can supplant our federal education dollars with $1.8 billion of our state money he is not addressing the needs of the children or educators of Tennessee.
If this tax money is available, why are we not using it to improve public education in this state?
Rather than send this money back to Washington I think we should just send Speaker Sexton’s idea to the trash can.
GREGG HUDDLESTONE
Gray
What’s the ‘Tennessee way?’
House Speaker Cameron Sexton proposes to “start the conversation” about rejecting $1.8 billion in federal education funding for disadvantaged K-12 students, so as “to do things the Tennessee way.”
This should be understood in the present political context.
The JC Press editorial board is right to connect it to controversial and emotionally charged issues of race and gender, which seem to have consumed our state Legislature of late. Much like the recent decision to refuse $8.3 million in decades-old federal CDC funding for HIV prevention and treatment, a wrong-headed and damaging decision based on unfounded accusations.
In both cases the “promise” is that state funding is available to replace federal funding, but so far no one has explained what is meant by doing things “the Tennessee way.” We should not forget that Gov. Lee, without the least pushback from legislators, more or less secretly hired ultra-conservative Hillsboro College President Larry Arnn as an education consultant. Some of his gems include “at the heart of modern education is enslavement,” “education destroys generations of people, like the plague,” “colleges of education are the dumbest,” and whose stated goal for Tennessee education was to demonstrate that professionally trained teachers aren’t necessary.
Tennessee has $76 billion allocated by the federal government, based on need, for this fiscal year. In that context, Cameron’s ponderings and the rejection of the HIV funds are pernicious grandstanding. We should be alarmed, though, by the choices for targets: all involving public school classrooms, privacy rights and local autonomy.
Who shall define a vague phrase like “the Tennessee way”? Surely more of us than an arrogant supermajority state Legislature, too frequently overlooking their ignorance while assuming their own expertise.
JENNIE YOUNG
Elizabethton