Privatizing essential things

Texas is big.

I don’t know how I got there Sunday evening but I found myself online on the state’s list of agencies. I know it was a list because it was alphabetized. This doesn’t happen to more than seven or eight people a day but I scrolled all the way through it. It was massive. If you want to try this on your own, stretch every 15 minutes. You might want shades, too.

If you’re indeed willing to do that, it’s pretty interesting. The first thing I noticed was that the State Anatomical Board is gone. I’m not kidding. I was scrolling through the A’s and it was gone. No address or contact number. This is how big the state government is: Nobody seems to know it’s gone! I haven’t seen anything in the news about it.

I almost clicked on another link. It seemed important to know what the “Apiary Inspection Service (Entomologist of the State)” does with bees but I’ll come back. Bees are pretty interesting but what I really want to know is how a job at that agency fits on a business card.

From a marketing standpoint, the state either needs to add or subtract some agencies until the 14 appeals courts appear on one page. I think it would be more customer friendly, especially at lower speeds.

The agency I did click on was the Council of Competitive Government. This seemed impressive. Aggressive even. When I read that name I thought of action. Here! Right here in Texas was the Holy Grail of Jeffersonian Democracy. The description read, “Seven members who are appointed to transform the business of government…” The council was formed in 1993. I can’t wait for the progress report.

Scrolling through, there was a lot of stuff that was worth looking at, like the Education Commission. But I know what’s going on there. It’s worth a column itself but I hope everyone is following the issue of school vouchers. It’s extremely important.

Wait a sec…

I’m about to commit a writing felony. I didn’t intend to. But when I got to the Education Commission I remembered the vouchers. Forgive me. I have an opinion on this I keep intending to write. I don’t like what vouchers do to small towns. Schools are the center of town. They employ more than teachers and administrators who (and this is not a good thing) can take their careers somewhere else if they’re patient and put up with the hassle of a new school. The maintenance and support staff didn’t move here to teach. They live here.

Vouchers gut rural schools. The premise of the effort is a bit Orwellian but the result is the same. Students, some of them when they need it least, will be segregated by income. The Commission describes it differently. They see it as a way up the opportunity ladder for underprivileged children. But make no mistake there will be segregation. Not everyone is going to find a school they can afford. Vouchers are privatizing schools. You need look no further than privatized prisons to see the effect of private entities gaining control of public services and profiting. In the case I saw of private prisons, it was a boon for employment but nobody ever anticipated the released inmates had no money to leave. They lived on the state and local dole, the prison paid guards like good HEB clerks but in the end nobody in town made a dime more than before except the warden. It seems like a harsh comparison. Underfunded school students aren’t prisoners, but subtly, they are confined for life or, at the very least, their education is tied for 12 years to a bottom line. Either way, it never works. Consider the economic impact alone. Private schools need to profit. They will hire teachers who will probably might make more but will definitely work more. And for most, it will be work located somewhere else. Our school system has to be one of the biggest employers in town. Don’t think in terms of the grind of education policy, think about economic impact. Think about it like laying off people or losing jobs. That’s just part of the loss.

Nothing good comes from privatizing essential things. Public education is the worst thing to sell pieces of. Pretty soon it’ll be gone.

We already lost the State Anatomical Board. I hope they let us find that before we do anything else.

Gosh. Texas is big. I only made it through the E’s.