Real Life Math Problem: Let’s just pretend that a deadbeat has to pay child support of $130 dollars a month for his beautiful daughter. He instead decides that he doesn’t want to pay any child support because, well, he is a deadbeat. But one day, he sees the light and decides that he will pay $100 a month. Does he stop being a deadbeat?
What if that deadbeat is our governor and the child is actually the children of Florida’s school system?
In a much celebrated (as in he finally did something humane) move, Governor Scott decided that he won’t sign the state budget unless it includes a $1 billion dollar increase in education spending.
“On this point, I just can’t budge…This is the single most important decision we can make today for Florida’s future.” He said. In that very same speech, he highlighted his continued commitment to create jobs.
A lot of journalists and talking heads saw this as a major turning point for one of the least popular governors in the country.
The only problem is, many of those talking heads forgot to ask our governor why the schools needed $1 billion dollars in the first place. It turns out that in the last legislative session, Rick Scott did budge and signed a budget that chopped $1.3 billion from the school system. Here at 1Miami, despite being affected by those cuts, we decided to do the math. It turns out that if you include last years cuts and this years demand from Scott, the education budget is still $300 million dollars short from were it was before he became governor.
That is a lot of children to leave behind. To not be called a deadbeat, you have to pay what is owed to your child. Similarly, to be called a good governor, you need to know simple math and give our children’s schools all that is owed to them. We just hope that the governor doesn’t use the same spin by creating “new” jobs out of the old ones he cut in the first place.
