One of the sticking points of the North Carolina state budget is always education.
Republicans have had a majority in the state legislature since 2011, which means they have controlled the budget for over a decade and are routinely bashed in the mainstream media for not spending enough on education.
The question is, how much is enough.
The Fiscal Research Division of the North Carolina General Assembly released the State General Fund Budget Overview and Outlook as part of the process of writing a 2023-2025 budget.
According to that document, in the 2022-2023 fiscal year the state spent 40.4 percent of the budget, or $11.3 billion, on public schools. That is only what the state spent on public schools and doesn’t account for the amount county governments spent on public schools.
In addition, the state spent 18.6 percent of the budget or $5.2 billion on higher education.
So, the total the state spent on education is 59 percent of the state budget.
The next highest expense for the state was Medicaid, which accounted for 16.9 percent of the budget, or $4.7 billion.
Those three together account for 76 percent of the state budget.
By comparison, the state spent 3.1 percent of the budget for $853 million on the court system and $633 million for 2.3 percent of the budget on public safety.
In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, the state spent 49.3 percent of the general fund budget on salaries and 21.3 percent on benefits. Medicaid service costs made up 15.2 percent of the general fund budget and everything else was 14.2 percent of the budget.
The COVID relief funds had a significant impact on the state budget. North Carolina received $5.7 billion in State Fiscal Recovery COVID relief funds and other American Rescue Plan federal grants of $7.8 billion. That $7.8 billion includes $4.5 billion for education, $1.3 billion for childcare, $830 million for housing assistance and $496 million for public health.
The solution is to extend Medicaid as the Obamacare advocates want to. That way, education will be a smaller percentage of the state’s expenditures!
And what do we get for the money at these GOVERNMENT schools? Medicaid is health care for indigents. Our govt creates more indies everyday, with Manna from Heaven. Now we are addicted to it. Oyen como van?
So, what’s wrong with this picture? 40.4% of the budget spent on education and kids can’t read or do math. I don’t believe lack of money is the issue as many profess.
There’s also WAY too many education bureaucrats, not teachers, in the system. Want an increase in pay? Get a master’s degree, even if it’s not required for the position. Want another pay increase? Get a PhD and you’ll not only get extra money, but a promotion to a higher position. See how this works?
The only way to pay teachers more money is to reduce the “overhead” of the administrative bureaucracy, but that will not be easy since they have ties to the elected class.
Teachers and other education employees are generally paid on a step basis. These “steps” are increases in pay based on the employee’s service, but they also increase the value of the steps each year. See how this works?
So our state spent three and a half times as much money on education as the next most expensive item.
Government education is a crock, and a bottomless money pit for incompetent educators and idle bureaucrats. And let’s not even get into the sexual predation (see the news from Page today?), the bullying, the violence, the institutional political indoctrination, and the drugs. Government schools are an open sewer.
If the state of NC suddenly decided to distribute the same $16.5 BILLLION to the private sector and allow parents to freely choose where to send their kids, with vouchers, do you think we’d have a much better education system?
I do.
see2xu, MILLER FORESTER, Jv, and my friend (if I may call you that) austin morris,
There’s no more that can be said nor said any better. Control of Education needs to go back to the local level
You may indeed call me your friend, Alan.
It would be a privilege.
Cheers!
Austin.