Cuts in state funding for technical education are a betrayal of thousands of Floridians eager to learn important and marketable skills.
Published April 11, 2004
Some of the better-paying jobs don't require a costly college degree, which makes Florida's indifference to technical education all the more bewildering.
Want a career as a plumber, electrician, practical nurse, mechanic, carpenter? Want to learn how to fix heating and air conditioning systems, drive large trucks, assist dentists, fight fires, build cabinets, repair computers? Want to earn a legitimate living in the six of 10 new jobs over the next decade that don't require a bachelor's degree?
Good luck, because the Legislature doesn't believe much in your future.
In the past six years, since the state adopted a "performance" budget for adult and career education in public schools, the money devoted to helping people learn employable skills has dropped by 13 percent. Does that make any sense? The state spent $435.5-million in 1998, and, facing six years of inflation in teacher salaries and program costs and the increased demand from a growing population, it is spending $378.8-million this year. Here's one other point of reference: While community college spending increased by 33 percent and university spending by 27 percent, budgets which also are woefully inadequate, career education dropped by 13 percent.
This is a disgrace, but don't take our word for it. Here is what the Council for Education Policy, Research and Improvement, a state government agency, wrote in January:
"Despite these enormous needs for education and training, adult and career education programs often receive the lowest priority from state policymakers among all education programs. This is especially troubling given the fact that a performance-based funding structure has been in place since 1997 for this area of education. . . . School districts have clearly responded to the performance mandate by increasing productivity, but the promise of funding for those increased performances never followed."
Broken promises. Sound familiar?
Last year, school districts provided career and basic education to 530,000 students, most of them adults. In some cases, the schools help adults earn diplomas they never had or help immigrants learn English, but in every case they are helping someone reach a life of gainful employment. Those who completed technical training programs in 2001 took jobs with average annual wages of $26,340, which is two-thirds more than the average for high school graduates and only a fifth less than university graduates. In community colleges, which also provide vocational and technical training, graduates in nursing often earn more than those with four-year degrees.
"It's a true dilemma," says Clide Cassity, director of Pinellas Technical Education Centers. "On the one hand, we want to help people get into the work force, but we don't have the dollars to train all of them. Each year, we just keep falling further and further behind."
Pinellas, like most other districts, can't start any new programs without shutting down existing ones. The list of discontinued training includes small engine repair, mechanical drafting, legal secretary, machining, welding, industrial plastics, landscape management and electronics. Many of the remaining programs have waiting lists, including hundreds of people wanting to be trained to become a practical nurse. To make matters worse, the state provides no money to buy the equipment and facilities that are essential to starting new training endeavors.
As the Legislature this month puts together the state budget for next year, not much has changed. CEPRI calls on lawmakers to restore at least $28.2-million of the cuts, which would give career education the same amount next year as it had in 2000-01. Yet the House is offering only an extra $10-million and the Senate even less, $1.8-million.
A Legislature that almost prides itself on being cheap with education ought to recognize a bargain when it sees one. Vocational and technical training, whether in school districts or community colleges, is an efficient way to help people become immediately employable. Yet the ugly political reality is that the people who want to ply the trades don't have much pull in the Capitol. So lawmakers look the other way.
Not everyone wants or needs to become a lawyer. We also need people to fix the air conditioning and take care of us in nursing homes. That's what technical education produces and why the state's neglect is so utterly foolish.
