Want to spend a few billion?

Want to spend a few billion?

Marylanders are being asked to commit billions of dollars to improving education by a plan recommended by the Kirwan Commission.  It is still not clear where the legislature will get the money or even if they will.   Maryland is already one of the top states in the country when it comes to quality education.  Teachers are among the most highly paid with average salaries well above 50K.  Kirwan would start teachers at sixty thousand.  It has been estimated that the 3 billion dollar cost for Kirwan is just for the first year.  In ten years Kirwan could cost over 31 BILLION dollars.   Oh what fun it would be to spend that money on areas that really could do some good.

One might ask, is there a better way to spend all of that hard earned taxpayer money?   There just might be.   Here are a few thoughts.

First of all instead of throwing good money after poor teachers, why not use those dollars to hire more school social workers.   Or suppose we make schools into community centers.  In distressed neighborhoods, schools could be staffed after school with homework helpers, remedial teachers, athletic coaches, community organizers and even health clinic workers.  Kids could stay in-school and out of trouble.  

Families could go to schools to get advice on community services.  Government could have reps at a school once a week to guide families through all the available options to them.  Health care services could teach and provide reproductive health advice and supplies and how to avoid unwanted pregnancies.

We could help people not just get jobs but get TO jobs.  Right now mass-transit takes people from the hubcap of the wheel out to the rim.  But if you need to cross from one spoke to another, people need to go back to the hubcap and then out on another spoke.   This situation can make a 20 minute car ride take two hours by mass transit.  If you are in a low wage job and using mass transit your day is now twelve hours long.  Why not use some of those billions to create cross spoke mass transit routes to get people from the city out to the rim of the wheel where there are lots of jobs going begging.

Kids and young adults who are pushing drugs already get how capitalism works.  Why not teach them how to run a legit business that isn’t killing the community.  They are good at what they do, they just need a better product.

Kirwan is offering education for three and four year olds.  That is great.  But the cost of infant care is keeping lots of women out of the work force, including women earning professional salaries.    Some of those billions could go toward lower cost infant care.  Some of the women with infants could be trained to help provide the infant care. 

Maryland is already doing a good job with education.  And, while granted, it would be great to get even better education, there are many areas besides education that would support getting the benefit from the education we do provide.

If there are a few extra billions lying around we could throw that good money after some other problems.