To the Editor:

Although Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, and his fellow Republicans Sen.  Jim Davis, R-Franklin, and Rep. Michele Presnell, R-Burnsville, like to tout their $1 billion increase in funding for public education, they have little to say about how little of that money actually reaches the classroom. 

Funding for textbooks has remained at around $23 million for the past three years, a considerable drop from the $111 million allocated in the 2009-10 fiscal year. That means that school districts now receive $14.26 per student as opposed to the $67.15 they received some six years ago. The result is that in many districts students are no longer issued textbooks; rather there are class sets, which must remain in the classroom, and many of these are held together by duct tape. 

In 2017 when state funding shifts to digital textbooks, this issue will not fade away. According to June Atkinson, state superintendent of public instruction, it will take approximately $75 million to provide the necessary computers or electronic tablets. Add to that the cost of software. This shift assumes, of course, that students have access to the Internet at home. If not, will we find students and their parents clustered at Starbucks or McDonalds where free wi-fi makes completing homework possible.

Despite an increase of 43,700 students since 2008-09,  the funding for classroom activities (which includes textbooks) has declined by $1 billion, according to Philip Price, CFO for the Department of Public Instruction. So what Tillis and the Republicans in the state House have given with one hand, they have taken away with the other. On Nov. 4, we should tell them that textbooks do matter.

Lynda Self

Waynesville