Harris County Department of Education: Say no to Early to Rise

At their board meeting on Tuesday, August 20th, Harris County Department of Education trustees will be asked to support Early to Rise. You’ve probably heard a lot about it in the news but most people don’t know that not a single child will be directly helped by this program. This program, as proposed, simply takes money from your pocket, washes it clean at the HCDE, then puts it in someone else’s pocket. The theory is that by taking money from you and giving it to someone else, day care workers will receive training to take better care of children, who in turn will be model citizens instead of growing up as thugs. At least that is Sheriff Adrian Garcia’s theory.

Let me repeat: not a single child will be directly helped with the estimated $30 million that will be taken from taxpayers and given to a private company with almost zero oversight from elected officials. And as for Sheriff Garcia, I’m a bit more optimistic than he is and I don’t think we’ll turn out a generation of thugs if we don’t fleece taxpayers for this program.

No oversight from elected officials

Recall that at the meeting of the HCDE board in June, the proponents of the Early to Rise program told the HCDE board that they did not want the HCDE board to have the ability to select even one of the members of board of the Harris County School Readiness Corporation, the group that will be receiving the money taken from taxpayers. Marc Campos, over at Camposcommunications Blog, says that they are still having problems accepting any type of oversight:

Please don’t talk down to me when public funds are involved.  Here is from the Chron for subscribers only:

The Harris County School Readiness Corp., a new nonprofit led by business and civic leaders, is calling for a ballot initiative to levy a 1-cent-per-$100 tax through the Harris County Department of Education (HCDE)to generate about $25 million a year for training teachers and buying school supplies for child care centers serving children up to age 5.

Here’s the deal.  The group wants us to vote for a tax increase but they really don’t want us involved on how the funds will be spent.  Here is what their Chair said:

“We’ve been working to find the right balance of public oversight,” (James) Calaway said, declining to talk specifically about details until the proposal is presented publicly to the department’s board of trustees Tuesday.

Thank you very much sir!  What the f__k is the right balance of public oversight? Memo to this fella:  It should be 100{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} public oversight!  It doesn’t pass the smell test and could very much head to cronyism, lack of oversight, lack of transparency – you get the picture, which is a very cloudy picture.  In other words, screw the public.  I hope the HCDE doesn’t roll over on this.

Using taxpayer funds for private day care businesses

The Harris County School Readiness Corporation spokeperson Jonathon Day said at the June board meeting that funds would be used to train workers at private day care centers because they couldn’t afford to train their workers. What he is really saying is that he wants to take money from taxpayers and give it to people of his choosing – also known as picking winners and losers. If a business can’t afford to train their workers, they need to go out of business. Once again, not a single dollar is proposed to help children.

Harris County Department of Education funds will be spent on lawyers, not children

There will be so many lawsuits filed if the board approves this deal that it will be tied up in court for years. That is a-okay with the Harris County School Readiness Corporation – after all, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Would you spend your own money to get access to $30 million of taxpayer money to give to your friends? Of course you would. But what about the Harris County Department of Education? They are going to have to spend millions in attorney fees, money that should be going to their core mission of educating children at the ABC and Highpoint schools. What a shame that would be.

Evidence does not support Garcia’s theory

As I pointed out here, there is no evidence that supports the conventional wisdom, from Democrats and Republicans alike, that taxpayer funded early childhood programs make a difference after the third grade. If people really wanted to make a difference in the lives of children, instead of wanting a bigger government so that they can enrich themselves and their friends, they would focus on parenting skills and parental involvement. That is the only way to reverse the course of potential thugs.

Increased pressure to shut the department down

This is probably the best reason for the board to say no to this foolish plan. I’ve been a lone supporter on the Republican side – most of the folks on my side of the aisle want to close the doors. After learning more about the department and what they do, I supported keeping them open. I thought that they would have a year or so to clean up some bad practices (giving money to convicted felons is one) but as I reported here, they don’t seem to want to do that. Signing up for this plan would increase the pressure on the legislature to close them down. And I would certainly support that effort.

So I hope that the board does the right thing and just says no to Early to Rise.

Click here for the BJP Early to Rise information page!