"Keep The Teachers, Cut the Fat"

While liberal-progressive groups in Texas have been stirring up mass hysteria about budget cuts, more level-headed Texans have been exposing the truth about education spending in our state.  The recently launched Protect the Classroom website lists important truths about Texas education spending, and now Americans for Prosperity has launched Red Apple Project to show district-by-district, how much of our 'education' dollars are spent outside the classroom. 

AFP has also revealed how the supposedly non-partisan 'Save Texas Schools' group is nothing more than a front group for some very left-leaning folks.  Save Texas Schools is holding a rally in Austin today, supposedly to save the children from those eeeevilll Republicans, but the group's ties to arch liberal George Soros are indicative of a much more sophisticated agenda.  From yesterday's Americans For Prosperity Release:

"None other than the George Soros crony, Fred Lewis, serves on the steering committee and is co-chair of strategic partnerships for Save Texas Schools. Lewis is the founder of Texans Together Education Fund, which received $80,000 from Soros’ Open Society Institute in 2009. Texans Together spawned the notorious Houston Votes organization that came under fire for submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration cards in Harris County in 2010.”

“Lewis served as president of the left-wing organization Campaigns for People, which worked to keep large private donations out of campaigns. Brian Donovan was an associate of Lewis’ at Campaigns for People. Donovan, who also worked for the Travis County Democratic Party, is the fundraising co-chair for Save Texas Schools.”

“Clearly the ideologies of these men have been to promote the big-bureaucracy, big spending status quo in which we have one non-teacher for every teacher and fail to focus education spending on the classroom. We believe that throwing more money at a problem does not create solutions. We’ve been increasing the amount of tax dollars going to schools in Texas for decades, only to see a decline in test scores and college-readiness, and an increase in the dropout rate.”

A perusal of the Save Texas Schools website indicates that they believe there is not one iota of waste anywhere in the education budget, and that any perceived deficiencies in public education can be solved by, wait for it.... more money.

It will be interesting to see just how many parents and teachers have been duped by this group, for indeed the education bureaucracy has hostages and they aren't afraid to use them.  Hopefully, now that left-leaning media no longer hold a monopoly on the news, more Texans are better informed about education spending.  Rather than continue to throw money at anything labeled 'education spending,' we need to listen to retired school teacher Collen Vera's call to "keep the teachers, cut the fat."