To help gin up support for his phony “jobs” bill, Barack Obama has spent the last week or so telling us that our nation’s school buildings are in dire need of repair. Many are “old”, “leaking”, and “falling apart” – with “no heat in the winter or air-conditioning in the summer”, he laments. And ventilation is so poor in some buildings, he claims, it can make students sick.
And yet, the federal government still managed to dole out $500 million this year on music and arts education programs that include such vital curriculum as hip-hop and rock band, as part of the “Race to the Top” competition that received a total of $4.35 billion in “stimulus” funds in 2009.
Personally, I don’t think the federal government should be involved in funding local school repairs or arts programs. But if it is going to be, shouldn’t the former take priority?
Or could it be that the school building landscape isn’t nearly as bleak as Obama makes it out to be?
Nashville Mayor Karl Dean used the city’s famed Ryman auditorium on Friday to announce new offerings next year in songwriting, rock band and hip-hop performance, and recording and disc jockey remixing.
“Nashville is blessed with a tremendous infrastructure of creators of music, more than any city in America, and we need to take advantage of that. This will give us the opportunity to leverage those resources,” Dean said.
Tennessee schools, which have ranked near the bottom among U.S. states on standardized test scores, have made strides recently in test scores and graduation rates.
The state’s schools are among the recipients of $500 million grants from the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” competition.
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