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SC DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION SPENT MORE THAN $350,000 ON CONSULTANTS, CONTRACTORS IN ONE MONTH
The apologists for South Carolina’s public education czar Jim Rex have been screaming bloody murder over their belief that Gov. Mark Sanford’s request to cut $350 million from the state budget would cost 4,000 teacher jobs.
Sanford and his supporters have argued that there is plenty of state government waste to cut without losing teaching jobs. And perhaps a good place to start would be within the State Education Department.
The Voice for School Choice has discovered that Rex’s Administration spent $358,398 in taxpayer money on “non-state consultants and contractors” in one month alone (February 2009).
What, exactly, are “non-state consultants and contractors”? Well, nobody really knows for certain because Rex comes in a close second to Communist China when it comes to creating transparent government.
Going through a list of the expenses reveals little but the name of the company receiving the money, and the amount of the check. For all the taxpayers know, these people could have all been paid to consult on toilet fixtures at the Rutledge Building.
Some people (mainly the contractors) might protest that these are very necessary costs, incurred in the carrying out of actual instruction. Maybe, but how are taxpayers supposed to ever discover the real nature of these expenses?
If parents are being warned that classroom instruction could be harmed by budget cuts, then they have a right to know why this much money is being spent, and exactly what it is being spent on. If teachers are being told that they could lose their jobs in local classrooms, then they have every right to know what the money that could be paying their salary is being spent on.
You can see a full list of the expenses over at The Voice’s website.
I would be really interested in hearing Rex and his defenders justify dropping more than one-third of a million dollars for consultants and contractors to do some kind of work that they won’t disclose.
On top of that, I wonder how much of this money was given to out-of-state consultants and contractors. My guess is more than half, but who knows. No, seriously… who knows?
Jim, and Inez before him, really beleives that he is “doing it for the kids” and that he has a “right” to our tax money. Clamoring for more money, complaining about teachers losing their jobs, and then spending public money on consultants (even his own personal political consultant) is an outrage. He should be ashamed of himself.
Sanford Shrugs His Shoulders At Specter Of Overcrowded Schools
VIDEO:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgJ0t8KJaFI
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Anonymous:
That’s because Sanford and the Voice for School Choice, know that the only way we are going to ever wean people off public schools is to cut back on funding and shift more resources to private schools. It will be painful for a while, but the only way to get rid of an entitlement program is to slowly starve it out of existence, so that people stop finding it an acceptable alternative.
Sanford is trying to take steps now to encourage people to pay for their children’s schooling, and not expect the taxpayer to do that. Yes for now that will mean bigger classrooms, fewer teachers and fewer resources for the public schools; but in the long run we can get the children of parents who don’t need help into private schools, and off the backs of the taxpayer.
Then we can reduce the number of public schools to those necessary to service those people to poor to afford private schools. This will in turn result in significantly fewer Teachers on the states payroll, allow us to get rid of all the overpaid administrators currently in the public school system, and dramatically scale back the Department of Education. The cost savings to the state will be tremendous, and we can get education on a free market system, where you can get the quality you are willing to pay for.
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