Smart Start, More at Four facing crushing cuts
Submitted by scharrison on Thu, 05/26/2011 - 10:53am
Happy talk aside, the GOP's contempt for early childhood development is plainly clear:
One provision would cut the administrative budget for all local (Smart Start) partnerships by 50 percent. Zimmerman said such a reduction in funds for rent, office costs and salaries at local partnerships “means it will be impossible for them to stay open.”
Combine that with the harebrained scheme of firing all the teacher assistants, and you've got a formula for early childhood arrested development.
And like so many other bills put forward, Republicans feel the need to shuffle programs around, to demonstrate their power over the Executive:
In addition, the subcommittee on education has approved moving More At Four from the Department of Public Instruction to the Division of Childhood Development under the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, a change that could eliminate matching federal education funds.
If we were dealing with sensible leaders, that loss of matching funds would cause them to hesitate. But we're dealing with zealots, who probably view that loss of funds as some sort of "kill two birds with one stone" bonus.
Wait a minute
The Tarheel Taliban LOVE early childhood development, right up to the point of being born.
After that? Tough shit, kiddies.
If you wanted a good life, you should have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth like Art Pope was.
Do good. Be nice. Have fun.
Yeah, if they could implant
a little tv monitor in the womb, so that blastocysts could learn the lyrics to "Onward Christian Soldiers", they'd probably be willing to set aside a couple of hundred million in a line item for that.
Almost
The TV monitor would be unique but there's already a plethora of patents for strap-on fetal education and communication devices. I stumbled across this genre when I was tracking down some dubious non-profits. Just search Google Patents for terms like fetal speaker or fetal educator.
I wonder if they would work
on middle-aged amateur writers who are addicted to adverbs and first-person observations? I'd certainly be conceivably actually very interested in something like that.