Opinion: Gov. Jeb Bush plays a better teacher on TV

TALLAHASSEE -- You'll have seen the campaign ad by now. There's a beautifully furnished, American-flagged, not remotely overcrowded classroom full of rosy-cheeked, well-fed children. There's Gov. Jeb Bush: beautifully coiffed, rosy-cheeked and well-fed himself, calling on various Norman Rockwellesque tykes as they thrust their small hands in the air, eager to learn. And he is eager to help them learn: Indeed, the ad implies he is singlehandedly leading Florida to the sunny uplands of enlightenment and economic growth usually associated with states that actually spend money on educating their young.

It's like one of those old Soviet propaganda posters: the Glorious Leader taking the Happy Workers to the Socialist Paradise.

There's always a gulf between salty reality and the pablum politicians expect you to swallow. But now the disconnect is gargantuan. Even as the governor plays teacher on TV, he's attacking a citizen initiative to limit the number of students in a public school class. Even as he smiles regally down on a Utopian gaggle of cute kids, too many actual Florida schoolchildren are packed like battery-farm pullets into paint-peeling classrooms stocked with out-of-date textbooks.

The Legislature has followed the governor's lead like so many sheep. Florida ranks down at the bottom with Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi in per capita education funding. Some calculations have the state 42nd in the nation, some 46th and some 49th. Cuba has a higher literacy rate than we do. Yet the Legislature has just presented Florida corporations with a tax break worth $262-million -- which the governor pushed for.

An obvious point, but worth making once more: Think what an extra couple hundred million could do for schools in Florida. Or, for that matter, indigent care or drug treatment programs. But children, poor people and junkies don't give campaign contributions. They don't even vote much.

The other week, Jeb Bush broke down in tears, talking about his daughter Noelle. She got caught writing her own tranquilizer prescriptions. He's obviously hurting for his troubled child. Yet the governor remains committed to locking up drug offenders -- the ones not related to him -- instead of treating them. Most young people with a controlled substance problem end up in jail, not rehab. Who among the powerful will cry for the ones who can't afford a good lawyer?

Another obvious point: How much money you have determines how the criminal justice system deals with you. Same with social services. When was the last time anyone misplaced a 5-year-old from a rich family? But here's little Rilya, lost; the state apparently defrauded by its own Department of Children and Families, and the governor responding by appointing a "blue ribbon panel" -- another one -- to look into the matter.

In 1998, Jeb Bush campaigned on fixing an agency that had long been a byword for dysfunction, piously opining, "It is no wonder that people lose faith in their government when the state can't account for the safety of abused children." Quite.

That minority of you who have lived in Florida longer than five minutes know better than to expect what this administration and its legislative minions say to remotely match what they do. They say they want to protect kids in state care, but have so far refused to set aside $12-million to pay more advocates for children (there's a chance that money may be set aside for this in the budget they'll vote on today, what with bad publicity over Rilya snowballing). They say they want to address overcrowded schools but have been hostile to allowing a citizen-driven demand for smaller classes to be placed on November's ballot.

Jeb Bush hasn't dared speak overtly against the amendment but he has backed a measure to require that citizen initiatives come with a "cost to the taxpayer" (estimated by people who are on the state payroll and just might have an agenda).

You might wonder what it cost poorer taxpayers to absorb the cuts to wealthier taxpayers the Bush administration has pushed over the last couple of years. You might wonder what an undereducated, underachieving population of young people costs the taxpayers in terms of keeping a lot of them in prison.

There's been a capital hissy fit over a ballpark number for what the smaller-class amendment might cost. Mark Herron, a lawyer associated with the Coalition to Reduce Class Size, has mentioned a figure of $8- to $12-billion. The Florida School Boards Association floats a lower number -- $4- to $5-billion. No, it's not cheap. Yes, we may have to raise taxes. But fully 75 percent of voters in a St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald poll said they'd support higher taxes to get 21st century schooling for Florida's children.

This ain't rocket science, y'all: If we want an educated populace fit for more than selling overpriced hotdogs at Disney or bulldozing trees when St. Joe Paper Co. gets around to paving the "great northwest" of the state, then we have to suck it up and pay.

Maybe the next time the governor rolls up his sleeves and "teaches" a class, he can tell the children about social responsibility. About sacrifice to build a decent society. About how words should match deeds. That would be a good lesson for them -- and him -- to learn.

-- Diane Roberts, a former Times editorial writer, is a professor of English at the University of Alabama.

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