The governor’s balanced budget initiative has brought back an old argument that comes up whenever it is time to cut spending. How much more money is needed to make education work? Spending money on kids is a great argument but maybe the question is about how the current educational system works. The best lessons I learned were from my parents who worked harder at my education than anybody who was paid to teach me. Granted you can spend money on computers, buildings and administrators but that alone has not translated to success. Before money is automatically thrown into a self-serving spending cycle, challenges in the educational system must be accurately identified. History teaches us collective wisdom of the day determined the source of the black plague was decidedly fleas and dogs were slaughtered by the hundreds. But like a lot of well-intentioned ideas it was somewhat wide of the mark, and had unexpected consequences. The thought leaders of the time, by not accurately identifying that the problem was rat fleas, unwittingly eliminating the most effective way in 1349 to hold down the rat population and thus a more vicious rash of Black Plague spread. –Always positioning to spend money on education gets old for tax payers. No one likes paying taxes without a desired return. My hope is in over six hundred years we have an evolved thought process.