Education & Childcare Archive
“Over the Fence” with Lisa Paine-Wells
A Rural Perspective on the Challenge of Quality, Affordable Childcare
March 3, 2023
Are you worrying about how to get affordable childcare so you, your spouse, or your partner can go to work to make ends meet and get ahead? Well, you are not alone! In fact, the National Database of Childcare Prices reports that “childcare expenses are untenable for families throughout the country.”
A big part of the reason is that the U.S. ranks 35th out of 37 countries in early childcare and education funding among economically developed democracies. Our governments – federal and state combined – spend only about 0.3% of gross domestic product, less than half of the OECD average of 0.7%, on helping families with childcare. The result is that childcare in America suffers from both high operating costs and unattractive wages. For rural communities, longer travel distances make the problem even worse.
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Fixing America’s Child Care Crisis
September 18, 2022
The Problem: Child care, from birth to kindergarten, costs (far) more than most families can afford. And that keeps many parents, especially single parents, from being able to get a job, make a living, and get ahead.
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A Tax Cut or Better Higher Education– Which Do Rural Virginians Need More?
August 14, 2022
Governor Youngkin claims that Virginia’s current budget surplus means that Virginians should get a big tax cut. But what else could we do with that budget surplus that might benefit average Virginians more than a tax cut? How about making our higher education system more affordable and more accessible to everyone?
Because the truth is that Virginia woefully underfunds its community colleges and state universities relative to other states. In fact, Virginia ranks 44th of all states in its per-student funding of two-year colleges! At $5,000 per student, it is well below the national average of $8,000. Its neighboring states, even West Virginia, are all above or near the national average. As a result, community college tuitions in Virginia are as much as 40% higher. No surprise that enrollment has declined in recent years.
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Nick Freitas and the billionaire Koch brothers love educational savings accounts. Should you?
May 16, 2022
The Washington Post op-ed by Virginia Delegate for Culpeper Nick Freitas and Jacob Fish, deputy director of Americans for Prosperity-Virginia sounded innocuous enough. Virginia parents, it argued, deserved K-12 education choices other than our public schools. So why not offer them “education savings accounts” (ESAs) – a way to stash money away, tax-free, that they would then be free to spend any way they chose, as long as it is (ever so loosely) connected to their children’s K-12 education. Education, the op-ed went on, shouldn’t be “one size fits all”. Seems reasonable enough – on the surface.
But let’s dig a little deeper. Americans for Prosperity claims to be a grass-roots organization – but in reality, it is a vehicle for channeling millions of dollars from the mega-billionaire Koch brothers to their pet causes. They are famous (or infamous) for fighting against laws and services that help average Americans (like health care and labor unions) -- and for lower taxes (so that billionaires can amass even more wealth).
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“Over the Fence” with Emily Pearcy
April 18, 2022
The high cost of education — and the very complicated risk/reward calculations that young people must make when judging whether to take on large amounts of educational debt — are a challenge not just for individuals but for their communities. As recent Rappahannock County Public Schools (RCPS) and Roanoke College graduate Emily Pearcy explains here, the problem of college debt is not so much the initial amount but the fact that interest charges can push the actual debt burden much higher over time
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Where Is Our “Education” Governor? Underfunded community colleges need funding now to train young people for better-paying jobs
April 16, 2022
New Rural Virginia readers may recall that Glenn Youngkin campaigned to be our “education governor”. Well, on April 14th, the Governor went on CNBC to announce that, thanks to the economic recovery (and, dare we say, the sound economic stewardship of his predecessor), Virginia’s revenues had risen 22% in March and the state treasury was $2.4 billion ahead of this time last year! What a nice housewarming present to an incoming governor!
And what did the governor suggest that Virginia do with that surplus? Use it to fulfill his pledge to be the education governor? Not so much. Instead, he and Republican legislators are pushing for $5 billion in… tax cuts.
Of course, we all love tax cuts. But if you are the education governor, why not see this surplus as an opportunity to make up for decades of state under-funding of education -- and specifically of our community college system?
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Education post-script: Our “Dark money” watch
February 17, 2022
If we didn’t have enough problems coming together as a community, we must contend with powerful outsiders using dark money to manipulate us through the media. From time to time, we hope to shine a spotlight on dark money manipulation. This issue turns that light on a 30-second TV spot launched recently called simply “Childhood”. The slickly-made video depicts children sadly wearing masks while the voice-over intones that they are losing out on their childhood. (See the video here) If this slick spot looks like it was produced for a political campaign – it should! The sponsor is the State Government Leadership Foundation. Sounds innocuous enough. But look at SGLF’s website and you will discover that it is dedicated not to our kids’ education but to – being a “strategic partner” of the Republican party’s campaign to win more elections!
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The Rural Virginia Education Issue
February 16, 2022
The good news is that Virginia’s public education system ranks as one of the very best in the nation. The bad news: there is a large and growing divide between the quality of education available in urban and rural communities. What needs to be done? We focus here on three priorities:
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RappCE To Teach Meat Cutting
September 14, 2021
Responding to a local farmer’s frustration that “we can’t get our meat processed,” Rapp Center for Education (RappCE) set out to see if they could do something about it. One thing led to another, a conversation with the Piedmont Environmental Council linked RappCE to American Farmland Trust to secure funding to set up the new program, including tuition reimbursement, curriculum, and textbooks for up to nine persons from around the region. Then, there was the connection to the folks at the Range Meat Academy in Chicago, who developed an entirely digital curriculum, broken into two modules.