There are a few jobs that just scare the whee out of me. Washing windows on the Sears Tower. Being paid to have the Ebola virus injected into your system — “nothing to worry about, sir, we’re quite sure the serum will work this time.” Cleaning out the wolverine pens. That kind of thing.
Not far down my personal list is driver’s education teacher. I knew one in Tennessee, a tough lady science teacher who taught drivers ed and coached the girls’ basketball team. She was very calm and competent about the whole thing, even though the only thing coming between her and a fiery death at the hands of an idiot student who accidentally drove into the oncoming gasoline tanker was an extra brake pedal on the passenger side. Now that’s security.
A lot of concerned parents felt better about their young’uns driving on real roads in real cars because they knew Ms. Laura had taught their kids to drive competently and thoroughly. But if the North Carolina Senate gets its way, many NC parents won’t be able to have that reassurance when sending their 16-year old kids out onto the roads unsupervised for the first time.
Please tell me you’re not surprised that the NC Senate is “led” by Republicans.
According to news reports, Senate Republicans want to zero out funding for a state program that pays for drivers ed programs in public schools. Public schools are allowed to charge parents up to $55 to teach their kids to drive, a financial hardship that many families are now finding it hard to overcome. But under the proposed plan, schools could charge up to the entire cost of the program, which exceeds $300 per student in many counties. Blue NC reports:
In each of the previous two budgets drastic cuts were made in the Driver’s Education program. Each county receives funds to pay for the program and with state cuts the counties have been stretched to the limit. Salaries for instructors have been slashed, worn out vehicles haven’t been replaced and classroom materials are nonexistent. The [S]enate budget cuts 28 million from DPI’s bus transportation in 2014-15 and transfers from the highway fund to DPI the 26 million Driver’s Education fund. It then instructs DPI to decide how much of that to use for buses and how much for DE. In 2015-16 the 26 million DE fund (either from the Highway fund or DPI) is eliminated all together [sic].
The proposal, which is part of the NC Senate proposed budget, takes the entire $26 million allotted for drivers ed from the Department of Transportation, which had administered the funds, and gives it to the Department of Public Instruction. Well and good, you might say, but the same budget cuts 6% from school bus funding. Senate leaders have told DPI officials they can use the $26 million slated for drivers ed to make up the cuts to their bus funding.
Senator Wesley Meredith (R-Car Wreck), the co-chair of the transportation committee, plays verbal bumper cars with the proposal, saying that it is just a matter of shifting money away from the DOT budget and into the DPI budget:
“What we’ve tried to do for the last three years is anything that doesn’t maintain our highways we’ve been trying to get out of the Department of Transportation.”
Again, it’s all well and good that the money is being moved from DOT to DPI, but Meredith doesn’t seem willing to address the fact that the drivers ed money is not being moved, it’s being made to vanish.
Disproportionate Effect on the Poor
Like everything else the NC GOP advocates, the effects of this budget cut will disproportionately affect those at the lower end of the economic scale.
North Carolina has long had a “graduated licensing program” for young drivers, with 16-18-year olds being forced to take 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours of supervised driving training before being given a learners permit. They then have to drive 60 hours with parental supervision before being allowed to get a real drivers licence. The other alternative is to wait until you’re 18, walk into the examiner’s office, take the tests, and get a license. The graduated program is widely credited with reducing accidents, vehicle injuries, and vehicle fatalities among teen drivers. DPI’s Reginald Flythe says that if the proposal passes, more teens will skip the graduated training program and just get a license when they turn 18.
The number of teens going through the training program fell by 10% when the state allowed school boards to begin charging $45 for students to take drivers ed in 2011. The fee rose to $55 in 2013. Parents say that they can’t afford to pay $300 to have their kids take drivers ed.
Impacting Teachers in Poor Counties
Ms. Laura, like most other drivers ed teachers, taught the course to make extra money. As Blue NC notes:
“Most driver’s education instructors are teachers and this is one way they supplement their incomes in order to make ends meet. With this income they are better able to remain in counties that provide little if any local teacher supplement rather than relocate to [richer copunties], leave teaching all together [sic], or take positions out of state.”
Of course, the NC legislature seems hell-bent on running teachers out of the state anyway, so I doubt they will care a whit about how this impacts teachers in rural counties with limited abilities to supplement the state’s meager teaching salaries.
More Vehicle Fatalities
Raleigh parent Kathy Hamilton says that she felt more secure knowing her three children received drivers ed instruction before getting out on the road, and says that the funding cut will cost far more in the long run because of the more accidents that will occur:
“It’s unfortunate, but what bothers me is there are people who couldn’t afford it. It will end up being more expensive in the long run.”
Some Senate Republicans are undoubtedly skeptical of the effectiveness of drivers ed on reducing vehicular deaths and injuries. If so, they ignored the results of a recent study that proved that efficacy:
Driving instructor Jimmy Ray agrees, and predicts more driving fatalities if drivers ed becomes a luxury item only accessible by the rich:
Is that a road we want to go down?
Why yes, Jimmy, it seems that Republicans in the NC Senate are perfectly content to go down that road. I hate to say this, but I’m quite convinced that they’re fine with your kids and mine getting slaughtered on the roads — it will take one of their little Biffs and Buffies getting turned into paste on an interstate highway or secluded country road for some of them to give a hoot about the impact these funding cuts will have on the lives and safety of every person who drives in North Carolina.
Take Action
Jordan Driving School, a private firm that contracts with NC’s Wake County to teach its students drivers ed, is urging people to e-mail state senators and ask that the budget retain the drivers ed funding. JDS writes:
“URGENT! If the Senate budget is passed, the North Carolina Driver Education program is at risk of being eliminated as of July 1, 2014. Please contact your state representative immediately to make sure this does not happen.”
Anyone idiotic enough to consider cutting funding for drivers ed is probably not going to be swayed by e-mails, but you’re welcome to add your voice to the chorus of disbelieving people who find the cuts appalling. A better choice for North Carolina would be to vote out the idiots in their entirety. Nice to know that an opportunity to do just that is coming up.
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Michael has been writing about politics, history and Web development since 2001. His first book is in development.
