One thing that strikes me about the debate about the budget cap is that there’s even a debate. When the Tsunami flooded Indonesia and Thailand, the world rose to the occasion of helping the victims. When Katrina, Rita and then Wilma swept in from the Gulf sea, again the world recognized that we all needed to help out. I’m not saying that the flooding in Norwalk is as significant by any means. But the failure of the levies in New Orleans bear a similarity in that those New Orleans levies failed because the investment in improving them was not made. And here’s Norwalk’s little Katrina moment, because parts of Norwalk is flooding, increasingly each month. Norwalk’s flooding is not a mystery.

Hal Alvord, Director of DPW has identified what it will take to identify, repair and maintain the sewer system. There’s no easy answer in what to fix first. But there’s a reality that for too long operational cuts on the city side of the budget have been made to support an increase on the educational side of the budget. The imbalance exists because the political will has not been there to question the educational budget. And like the local bureaucrats who worried more about their budget turf than what was good for the city, our BOE is fighting hard against accepting the spending cap enacted by the Common Council. In all likelihood, some of those BOE officials sent checks to help out Katrina and Tsumani victims, or at least were concerned that such a massive governmental failure could lead to such human devastation. But when it comes time for them to cast a critical eye on the local flooding, nary a peep.

Chris Powell has raised interesting issues today, in his article that appeared in The Hour (requires subscription). From Powell’s article:

But the premise of the Horton vs. Meskill decision — that putting a lot more state money into city schools so that they would spend much more per pupil than schools in the rest of the state and their students would catch up with the rest — has been utterly disproved.

The performance gap is as large as ever. It has not been caused by variations in school spending.

This is not to say that Connecticut’s new method of financing schools isn’t much fairer as tax policy, only that it has accomplished no more educationally than racial integration has been accomplished by the new regional “magnet” schools installed in the cities in response to another state Supreme Court decision, in the case of Sheff vs. O’Neill. Connecticut’s schools have been a little more integrated recently, but only in the inner suburbs, and only as a result of the exodus from the cities of minority-group members as the cities have disintegrated.

For years now during almost every legislative session the governor and legislators have revised the school aid formula to insert strange new variables that just happen to benefit towns with the most influential legislatives delegations. That is, the formula long has been adjusted not because of any discoveries about educational practice but rather about what’s best for particular politicians and their towns.

Powell is talking about the ECS funding, which Norwalk has long asserted, that Norwalk is shortchanged when it comes to that funding. But the important thing is that he has identified the big truth in all educational funding. More money does not mean a better education. THe burden placed on all Norwalk residents for a school system that is not delivering a better educational opportunity for the students is a great one. Infrastructure isn’t sexy, and its been easy in the past to defer it. But here’s where our BOE can come to grips with the reality that they should be watchdogs not only over the education of Norwalk’s students, but the economic vitality of Norwalk. The BOE budget must be pared back, it’s up to the BOE to do it.