If Gov. Rick Snyder is all about fairness, some believe he's being
unfair to education.
In the first Snyder budget, there is a hefty $470 per pupil cut to
K-12 education and just for good measure a 15% whack for higher
education.
The governor concedes he has a hidden agenda in lowering the money
boom on these folks. He wants to motivate them to make up that loss of
state aid by making some painful cuts on their own by squeezing out
more concessions from their already squeezed workers.
But what about the schools and universities that have already done
that? Should they take an across the board hit when they've done what
the governor wants?
Reasonable folks would conclude the fair answer would be "no."
Dr. Lou Anna Simon who runs the show at Michigan State says she's
revamped the health care paradigm and realized cost savings. She was
hoping the Snyder guys would take that into account.
And her colleagues in the K-12 system had the same hope.
But what can they do?
Well, out of fairness, the first thing the Snyder administration
should consider is some mechanism for determining who has done a good
job and therefore should not be penalized.
But what constitutes a good job? And who will decide the metrics
of that, to borrow one of the governor's favorite catch phrases?
Perhaps this can be done in the legislative process which might
be tricky but it's worth thinking about.
Every school and university that feels they measure up to the
Snyder demand should have their day in court to prove it and depending
how good they are at lobbying, they might get a reprieve from the cuts.
Then again that is a lot of heavy lifting for legislators and the
governor but if this is all about fairness, it might be the right thing
to do.