Education

The following commentaries address our educational system:


1. There Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

TANSTAAFL 

By Skip Keyser
(Originally published by The Napa Valley Register, October 28, 2002)

The acronym that heads this commentary stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.”  It aptly applies to the crux of whether or not to vote for Measure M – the $95,000,000 school bond measure soon to appear before Napa voters.

Unfortunately, not a lot has been heard about this measure or the reasons why it ought to receive your yes vote. 

Even more unfortunate is the tendency of some voters to routinely disapprove of school bond measures, either out of some misguided sense of frustration over how the funds may be spent or – worse yet – because they think earlier bond measure(s) “fixed the problem.”

And then there are the voters who have the same attitude as one of my co-workers some years ago when I worked at the Oceanic Division of Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Vallejo.

This individual was the sort who would be in favor of an ordinance only allowing airplanes with two right wings to land at Napa County Airport.  His litmus test for bond measures was as simple as it was shortsighted: “Does it raise my taxes?  If the answer is yes, I vote no!”

This was not an individual steeped in the finer points of enlightened self-interest. But I suspect his “over my dead body” response to financing of public education is more common than one might expect, particularly in a locale as upscale as Napa.

So why should you vote yes on Measure M?  To put it simply, because there isn’t any status quo when it comes to educating the young people who will someday run this country.  Things either get better or they get worse.  And in terms of public education infrastructure, they’re going to get worse, much worse, unless we invest more money than we have to date. 

There’s no way to sugar coat this fact, and we shouldn’t try to.  Passage of Measure M will cost each of us money that we might well spend on something else.

·      Money we might well spend on remedial education.

·      Money we might well spend to hire better-educated people from outside Napa.

·      Money we might well spend on social services for those who receive a substandard education.

·      Money we might well spend to attract teachers to teach in our dilapidated schools.

·      Money we might well spend later on more expensive “catch-up” alternatives to Measure M.

·      Money we might well spend on ourselves instead of investing in this country’s future.

And that’s exactly the decision we – and a host of other communities throughout California and across this great nation – are faced with.  Do we underwrite the infrastructure and fabric of our communities by investing in schools or do we try and make do with good enough? 

The answer ought to be the former, not the latter.  For when it comes to education, good enough isn’t.  And it’s time we stop kidding ourselves and stop denying our youth a fair shot at competing on an equal basis with other countries that do invest in education.  We can only import technical talent from abroad so long.  Eventually we – or our children – will have to pay the price for our shortsightedness.

Or, to paraphrase an old commercial: “We can pay for it now or we can pay for it later.”

Unfortunately, later might just be too late.  Vote yes on Measure M.  It’s the right thing to do.

Skip Keyser is a Napa businessman.