Greg Vandal: Don’t force a choice among essential programs

02/28/2005

Greg Vandal
February 28, 2005

Surely it was one of the most poignant moments in cinema. Meryl Streep, playing an Auschwitz survivor, was forced at gunpoint to sacrifice one child in order to save another. In “Sophie’s Choice,” Streep’s concentration camp character decided between life or death for her children. The film is haunting still.

Two decades later, the Minnesota political landscape seems mired in a similar way. Clearly, life and death are not so apparently involved, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are people of good intentions. But Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s newly proclaimed core value of “no new taxes” has created a kind of Sophie’s choice regarding services long considered to be essential and egalitarian. State budgets can only be balanced, it is argued, by sacrificing program for program. No credence is given to another choice—reaching beyond existing resources to expand the base rather than contracting the service.

As a school superintendent, I should stay out of the fray. Education might be considered fortunate compared with other state services. But I am also troubled that our small “victory” comes at a loss for so many others. I know our fates are intertwined.

If more money for education means that less is available for county services, then social workers who help our most troubled youth cannot intercede. If additional resources for the K-12 system mean that higher education is further stressed, then my own students may not be able to go to college. If paltry sums to public schools result in underfunding for human services, then more kids will come to us from troubled homes. If families cannot afford health care, then children will come to school sick.

Our dependency is clear. No wall separates us, one from another. Educators know that a child lost today will cost society tomorrow. We are aware that cuts to the social safety net wound us, too. Garrison Keillor chides Minnesotans to return to our social compact. Reinhold Niebuhr promotes action through hope, love and faith. Minnesota’s bishops preach the merits of the “moral budget.” Why are we now called by some to make a Sophie’s Choice?

Pawlenty’s budget purports to provide additional resources to our schools. Yet serious questions exist about the sufficiency of those increases; some studies indicate that nearly 10 times the offer might be required. Small districts like mine must make our own desperate choices as we cut programs.

On these pages in recent months, three former state finance commissioners, John Gunyou, Jay Kiedrowski and Pam Wheelock, have wisely suggested a more balanced approach. Their commentaries on the current price of government, as measured against the wealth of this state, show that it is our collective will, not our wallets, that might be lacking.

Sophie’s life on screen continually spirals back to that fateful moment in which child was traded for child. Though her psychological injury was permanent, Sophie’s physical liberation was secured by a determined alliance intent on protecting and freeing the innocent. In Minnesota, a similar alliance of voices believes that proper funding for education, health care, housing and other social services are also important social justice and freedom issues.

Unabashedly righteous and even indignant parents can be found today at the Capitol and at town hall meetings—part of a grass-roots movement intent on restoring reason and compassion to how we fund state services. These are good people who reject the notion, as do I, that we are faced today with a crisis of governance which offers us only a Sophie’s choice. Let us choose all children and the essential services that must surround them.