Posted on: Monday, April 19, 2004

EDITORIAL
School 'basic needs' require state attention

An education "reform" bill passed by the Legislature last week contains an extra $2.5 million to buy math textbooks for hard-pressed public schools across the state.

That's commendable, and it shows that legislators are listening to public school parents and others who say that in the real world, school "reform" is as much about up-to-date textbooks, clean and comfortable classrooms and adequate supplies as it is about governance.

But even lawmakers will admit that the $2.5 million is only a token down payment on what should be spent for textbooks.

School administrators acknowledge that many books are outdated, in short supply or in bad shape. But they note that budgets expected to cover books must also pay for other supplies and supplemental educational materials.

There's something fundamentally wrong here.

Our school system is launched on an ambitious program of raising standards and imposing new testing schemes to measure whether those standards are being met.

Unhappily, they cannot and will not be met if the basic textbooks available to students aren't adequate to teach to those new standards.

One hopeful sign is that parents, on their own, are helping to fill the gap. As reported by education writer Treena Shapiro, parents are holding carnivals, bake sales and other money-making schemes to supplement the book-buying budget.

That's heartwarming. The danger here, of course, is that such outside fund-raising efforts will simply cause existing dollars to be redirected elsewhere. There is never enough money to go around.

Ideally, such community support efforts should not be needed just to get our schools up to speed with their basic needs. They should be used to push our schools over the top.