COMMENTARY: Our Children’s Education is on the Ballot this Year

COMMENTARY: Our Children’s Education is on the Ballot this Year

Submitted to the AFRO by Elijah E. Cummings

More than half a century ago, my parents and a wonderful teacher named Mr. Hollis Posey followed their hearts and championed my right to learn.  As a result, I received the empowering education in our City’s public schools that would transform my life.

Although I am grateful that I received the “thorough and efficient public education” that is guaranteed to every child by Article VIII of Maryland’s constitution, I am deeply troubled that all of Maryland’s children are not receiving this most basic foundation for successful, productive lives.

A widely acknowledged study in 2016 found that Maryland’s public schools are under-funded by $2.9 billion each year.

In response, the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education [typically referred to as the Kirwan Commission] has determined that significantly more funding will be required to give every Maryland child a reasonable chance in life, especially children living in those communities with the deepest concentrations of poor families.

Both our values and our long-term self-interest demand that we speak truth to power about correcting this failure.

Far too many of Maryland’s children are being relegated to a future devoid of competence or hope.  This is an unacceptable failing – and it’s up to us, as voters, to assure that those we elect in November are committed to providing our children’s public schools with the funding that they need and deserve.

Although public education is primarily a state and local (rather than a federal) responsibility, the President and Congress have an important role in funding the public education of economically disadvantaged students (Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act) and students with disabilities (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

Currently, annual federal education funding for Title I and IDEA is significant (just under $16 billion and $12 billion, respectively).  However, these appropriations have not kept up with the rising cost of educating our students, nor with the legitimate needs of states like Maryland for a more robust and realistic federal partnership.

The President and his Republican congressional allies have failed to adequately address this challenge.  Democrats in Congress have had to fight just to avoid significant cuts in federal education funding.

As a result, our nation’s schools are no longer the envy of the world, a reality that threatens our long-term national security.

Maryland’s Democratic delegation to Washington understands that we must significantly expand federal education funding – but only by electing a Democratic majority to the next Congress can we make this commitment a reality.

Despite Governor Hogan’s assertions that Maryland is devoting more support to public education than ever before, the Kirwan Commission has acknowledged that far too many of our school children are being short-changed, especially in jurisdictions like Baltimore City.

On Election Day this year, we will decide whether Republican Larry Hogan or his Democratic challenger, Ben Jealous, will make the education of our children his top priority and fulfill our constitutional duty.

As a Maryland voter, I am a strong supporter of Ben Jealous’ candidacy to become our next Governor.  Maryland’s teachers, through their Education Association’s endorsement, are supporting him as well.

As a Past President of our national NAACP, Ben Jealous is painfully aware (as am I) that the percentage of Maryland public school students living in poverty has more than doubled since 1990 (from 22 percent to 45 percent).  We understand that properly educating all of our students, as well as meeting the rising cost of special education, will require a substantial and sustained infusion of additional state funding.

Drawing upon the Kirwan Commission’s upcoming final report and recommendations, our next Governor and State Legislature will have the duty to revise Maryland’s school funding formula for the first time in nearly two decades.  The Commission is expected to recommend increasing the base, per-pupil state funding from $6,860 to $10,880 for each school child.

These challenges, I believe, are why Mr. Jealous has publicly committed (1) to fully implement the Kirwan Commission’s recommendations during the upcoming 2019 legislative session; (2) to raise our teachers’ salaries by 29 percent; (3) to implement full-day, universal Pre-K; (4) and to more effectively target state education funding to those school districts with the largest concentrations of poverty.

On Election Day, our voters can also approve an amendment to Maryland’s constitution that will guarantee that public education’s share of the state’s casino revenues is fully committed to funding public education (Question 1).  This guarantee will provide an additional $500 million in annual state funding for our schools, an important first step toward closing the current $2.9 billion funding gap.

Both Ben Jealous and Larry Hogan have declared that they support Question 1.   However, Governor Hogan has yet to adequately explain why he diverted $1.4 billion of our State’s casino money from public education (as voters were originally promised it would be invested) to other purposes.

When I visit our children’s classrooms, I look into our students’ eager faces and know that we must act with a sense of urgency to adequately invest in their future.  On Election Day, God willing, Maryland’s voters will commit our State to a better future for us all, one filled with confidence, competence and hope.

Congressman Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.

This post originally appeared in the AFRO. The opinions on this page are those of the writers and not necessarily those of the AFRO.

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COMMENTARY: What Kind of Nation Have We Become When We Fail to Protect Our Children?

COMMENTARY: What Kind of Nation Have We Become When We Fail to Protect Our Children?

In the wake of yet another mass slaughter of innocent Americans, I am writing to implore my colleagues in both the Congress and our state legislatures to go to CNN’s website and listen carefully to the words of a young American named Cameron Kasky. You can find his declaration of principle and truth on CNN.com.

This 17-year-old student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, is demonstrating more courage, moral clarity and determination about the danger of unregulated guns in America (and, especially, the danger to us all of high-powered, military grade, semi-automatic weapons) than are many of the women and men with whom I serve.

As most Americans now know, on February 14 (Valentine’s Day), Cameron Kasky, his brother, Holden, and all of the students and teachers at their Parkland, FL, high school were forced to fear for their lives.  A deranged person had picked up a lawfully purchased AR-15, took it to the school, and methodically murdered 17 people, injuring another 14.

We also know that, in the era after the Columbine massacre of 1999 (13 dead and 24 injured), mass slaughters with semi-automatic weapons have become a harsh, terrifying and unacceptable reality of American life.

Just as we must redouble our efforts to reduce the violence in places like Chicago and Baltimore, we cannot – and we must not – forget the sense of loss and personal devastation that we felt after Virginia Tech (32 dead).  We cannot brush aside the primitive brutality of Binghamton, NY (14 dead), or Aurora, CO (12 dead), or Sandy Hook (the lives of 27 children and teachers methodically destroyed).

We must act.  Our national conscience and sense of security and self-worth cannot withstand any more breaking headlines – any more mass killings in San Bernadino, CA (14 killed), Orlando, FL (49 massacred),  Las Vegas, NV (58 killed and 546 injured), or Texas (26 killed).

Now, if you think that this partial listing of the butcher’s bill from our failure to adequately regulate semi-automatic weapons of war is incomplete, you are correct.  There is insufficient room in this newspaper to adequately remember all of the casualties from the gun violence that our nation has endured.

What should be heartening to us, however, is the determination and clarity that Cameron Kasky and young people across America are expressing in their challenge to their elected representatives, their governors and the President of the United States.

“At the end of the day,” Cameron observed in his CNN interview, “the students at my school felt one shared experience – our politicians abandoned us by failing to keep guns out of schools….”

“Our community just took 17 bullets to the heart,” he continued, “and it feels like the only people who don’t care are the people who are making the laws.”

I must agree.

There is no period of silence, no equivocating delay, no overreaching argument about the constitutional sanctity of our Second Amendment that is adequate to counterman a simple, compelling and unavoidable truth.

Cameron Kasky is speaking truth to power when he declares that, as a nation, we are failing to protect our people from this carnage.  Most unforgivable of all, we are failing to protect the lives of our school children.

Every last elected official in America, and every last citizen who voted for us (or failed to vote at all), bears a measure of responsibility for this failure and its bloody toll on human lives.  Yet, as Cameron Kasky also acknowledges, we are not all equally culpable.

“The truth,” he observed, “is that the politicians on both sides of the aisle are to blame. The Republicans, generally speaking, take large donations from the NRA and are therefore beholden to their cruel agenda. And the Democrats lack the organization and the votes to do anything about it.”

We, who have been elected to serve and protect our Constitution and the American People, can only stand before this challenge, acknowledge our failures and seek to reclaim our honor.

As a first honest step, we can acknowledge that before the federal assault weapons ban expired, it did not stop all killings, but it did significantly reduce the carnage.  We who serve in the Congress have the power, right now, to renew those protections.

The proposed Assault Weapons Ban of 2018 [H.R. 5087], sponsored by my colleague, Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, now has more than 173 co-sponsors.  Senator Diane Feinstein’s companion bill [S.2095] has 29.  I, along with all of Maryland’s Democratic Delegation, am fighting for its passage.

However, in proof of Cameron Kasky’s indictment, there are no Republicans in support of these modest, protective measures, only a few Republicans support strengthened background checks, and a Republican House and Senate leadership, beholden to the NRA, is denying us the ability to even have a floor debate and up-or-down vote.

Nevertheless, I am cautiously optimistic that the will of the American People will prevail.  A recent Quinnipiac opinion poll found that 67 percent of Americans (including 43 percent of Republicans) now favor an assault weapons ban.  Even more encouraging, the young people of our nation (along with many of us who are older) are mobilizing.

This growing movement for greater safety, security and sanity in our national discussion about guns – this March for Our Lives – will be bringing upwards of 500,000 Americans to Washington, DC, on March 24th – with companion marches across the nation, including here in Baltimore.  For more information, go to https://marchforourlives.com/ on your Web browser.

Even if you can’t march on the 24th, please remember this.  Our Constitution (including its Second Amendment) was not designed to be a collective suicide pact.  It was designed to protect the safety, as well as the liberty, of the American People.

Above all else, and whatever political obstacles may be placed in our path, we must protect our nation’s children.  Our sacred oaths and honor demand that – and more.

Congressman Elijah Cummings represents Maryland’s 7th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives.

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