In an attempt to balance what Mr. David Britten espoused in his recent guest editorial, I must say I’m not surprised by his comments. I even actually somewhat agree with some of them.

I am told he was a great administrator while at Wayland, and I’m sure he is for Lee School District now. This rebuttal in no way attacks Mr. Britten personally, Ranger Rick just has a different take on his assertions.

Let’s examine each statement he made one by one:

• The state reduced the Earned Income Credit (EIC) for low-income families.

Originally, this was a tax credit President Reagan championed. When it was enacted, it was a small program servicing mainly poor families/single parent families who were at the bottom of the pay scale. It allowed payment of more than a tax refund, using tax dollars paid by others to be refunded to those making less. In practice, it was and is a disaster. It sucks more and more money from the treasury every year because more and more fall into the lower tax brackets due to lower wages. It was a small percentage of the working population when enacted; now it is a monstrosity and the same state the author complains about is broke. As of 9/31/14, the state debt was $7.1 billion. Everybody took a hit during the past years due to economic meltdown both nationally and state-wide. EIC’s are still being paid, just at a reduced rate from previously allowed.

• Proposal 1 was to repair the state roads.

Later, it was found out it wasn’t as advertised, and the electorate was angry (later demonstrated by the 81% no vote, worst defeat in Michigan history). Nothing could be further from the truth. Proposal 1 was doomed from the start when the soup to nuts approach in one bill was presented for voting – fixing roads, restore cuts in EIC, and restoring funding to public schools. Evidently, politicians think the voting public is stupid and we would pass it.

If they want tax money spent through the public vote, put each on the ballot separately and a fair vote would be given. Since the politicians (both parties) in Lansing are gutless and can’t do their jobs allocating money through the legislature by voting themselves on the issues, they force it on the taxpayers to make the decisions they were elected to make.  Maybe there should be resignations if they want to shirk responsibilities?

• Truant child reason for cutting welfare.

I’m not an educator, but I don’t understand how this bill would be a bad thing. It sure would get bodies back in school if their truancy was going to affect the amount of welfare the family received. Evidently Mr. Britten believes getting students in school is a bad thing? If they aren’t in the seats, they can’t get an education. Those who remain truant, the rescinded welfare, according to statistics on young people exiting without a high school diploma, the money will be needed to spend on the Department of Corrections, which is unfortunate.

• Shutting down Detroit Public School District.

The Democrats have controlled the city, school districts, city departments and most of the office-holders, school administration, and department heads are African-Americans, so the insinuation of whites being in charge cannot be leveled in this case, unlike Chicago. Democrats have been in control for decades. What part of “not working” does the public not understand? The debt and unfunded or underfunded retirements and mandates are sucking the lifeblood out of the city. Graft and corruption abounds. The companies left, the jobs left, the middle-class “white flight” happened, and folks wonder why Detroit is suffering. Who is willing to move to Detroit and live in the city? Detroit is a dysfunctional, dangerous city. Have you ever viewed a third world country? – visit Detroit!

The school district is one of many problems Detroit is facing. The graduation rates are some of the lowest in the nation and Mr. Britten is debating that the school district is acceptable and should be given more resources without a change in leadership and direction for improvement?

• Cut federal funding if parents opt-out their children from annual testing.

I’m surprised this is even an argument. Is Mr. Britten for or against testing? How do you measure the extent of knowledge retained and/or logical reasoning? What other type of testing should be used to examine student progress or lack thereof? It used to be administrators would want their student body tested to determine how well they were educating students. That doesn’t seem to be the case any more.

I have many teacher/administrator friends. When others not in education started losing their jobs or were reduced in pay, salaries, and benefits, they didn’t have a choice. Suck it up and live on less. One year my co-pay went from $20 to $40, and I lost a large part of my salary. My education friends over those years had no or little change. When there was a $5 increase in insurance co-pay, you would have thought they had been gored by an ox – the complaining never ended.

One teacher lost her job at the end of the year, she was “pink slipped.” I felt bad for her, she was a dedicated and caring teacher. She complained about losing her job and her pay was lousy and her insurance co-pay too high, and this and that. As the new school year was about to begin, she was notified she was to return to the classroom, she would keep her job. She was overjoyed at keeping her job, even with the “lousy pay” and “high” insurance co-pay.

All during the years people were losing livelihoods and having to move out of state to find work, or work for less doing something else, teachers and administrators thought their jobs were safe and nothing would change. A teacher friend told me he had a job for life but he wasn’t happy with his insurance co-pays or salary increases in the recent years. I pointedly asked him with all the layoffs, companies closing up, jobs moving elsewhere did it ever occur to him education would surely be affected sooner or later? Without that tax money going into the state treasury and less and less being allocated for education, what did he think would happen?

I noticed area schools kept building; especially new athletic facilities, adding wings on existing schools, building new schools and fine arts centers. Guess things aren’t so bad for public education if building and spending takes precedence over teaching and spending on kid’s education. As with most things government related, the spending will continue until other people’s money runs out.

These may be the “salad years” for education – where the pay and benefits are the highest. If we have another downturn in the economy, an economy that has had very anemic growth and very little expansion, it will be much, much worse. If it is only a recession and doesn’t turn into a depression, we may be very lucky. I would be prepared for the worst and hope for the best.

Educators and administration folks should do the same.