Democrats Make Education Top Priority
Air Date:02/10/2011
By Travis Berg
Democrats in Pierre are making education funding their top priority. In their weekly press conference they announced support of Senate Bill 126.
The bill was introduced this week. It utilizes trust funds to generate money, but it doesn't allow local governments to opt out of the property tax freeze. Representative Susan Wismer of Britton is on the appropriations committee. She says she's concerned legislators aren't hearing what educators are saying.
Wismer says, "When I hear legislators talk about high administrative K-12 salaries, or frustration with small schools, I worry. Because they're using those issues as distractions to ignore the very real damage we are doing to our education system. And if they would sit down and really study the issues, come to the Appropriations Committee, they'd know that cutting the salaries of the all the administrators, and closing the smallest twenty, or however many schools they want to close, would not solve our education funding problem."
Wismer says they're not seeing the budget balancing they want. She says lawmakers are just pushing costs on local governments. Governor Daugaard says he will veto Senate Bill 126.
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