House leaders in the Transportation Appropriations Committee want to slice $21 million from the General Fund and use it to fund a toll road.
Think of what that money could do otherwise. How about use it to improve the achievement of disadvantaged children – children whose achievement consistently lags behind that of other children? The Disadvantaged Student Supplemental Fund may get $5 million more this year, perhaps $10 million. Either way, it remains massively underfunded.
Or how about putting that money for a toll road into the equally underfunded Children with Disabilities supplemental fund. Perhaps then a few of the school districts who regularly graduate less than 5% of such children (some graduate zero percent) can get their act together and give some substance to the constitutional right of children to equal access to a sound, basic education. I see no such right to drive.
I wonder what the parents of children who would be the beneficiaries of either of these funds will think when they drive on this road, have to pay for the privilege and see a new SUV glide by?
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