Governor Kristi Noem is still speaking, but I thought it was noteworthy that she’s singling out teachers and state employees for a 6% pay raises in the face of inflation, and when the state is in receipt of record tax revenues. As Noem notes:
Since I took office, our state has taken on unprecedented challenges. In 2019, we faced historic flooding that placed 63 of our 66 counties in federal disaster status. 2020 brought the COVID pandemic, among countless other challenges. I think we can all agree that our healthcare and frontline workers deserve our full support for their dedicated service these past two years. The funding increase to providers should go directly to those frontline workers. And our state employees have taken everything in stride, increased their workload dramatically and continued to provide our constituents with the best service possible.
The same can be said for educators. They adapt to challenges everyday. Our teachers are working with each student uniquely to prepare them for the future. School districts should reinvest this 6% increase directly in our teachers and other district staff.
This 6% increase is unprecedented, but also necessary. Many of these positions in these three areas are not keeping pace with their counterparts in the private sector or other states. They deserve our support – let’s give it to them.
It will be interesting to see what her opponents have to say about that. But, I think most would agree that it’s well deserved.
Considering inflation and the hard work of these groups, it is well deserved. For a long time, they’ve been at the end of the line for budget dollars.
I like some of the investments – fixing dams, investing in the park, etc Workforce housing is noble but that particular segment could get very ugly. Who gets the money? And for what?
It’s interesting that child care facilities both current and new builds are funded. Where is the funding for education at local colleges, universities, and trade schools. The DSS provides some training but more extensive training is needed to move the needle in quality care that young children deserve. Greater understanding of children’s developmentally appropriate behavior leads to quality care while parents are working to put food on the table. Additionally, let’s ensure that ALL child care providers have state licenses. (Let it be known that anyone can watch 12 or fewer children with no state oversight- this is egregious in modern times.)
Anonymous at 11:16, I remember when Governor Janklow shut down the early childhood programs at one (or more?) of the state colleges. I don’t remember the specific details but he found out the graduates of these programs were working for minimum wage and he believed it was unconscionable that someone would be suckered into four years of college to qualify for a minimum wage job. So you say, “pay the babysitters more,” right? Well, no.
When I had 3 young children, I sought out unlicensed care because every time one of my babysitters got licensed she raised her rates to more than I was earning per hour.
A friend of mine was a single mother of four at the time, on every entitlement program imaginable, and the state was paying her babysitter while she went to nursing school. The social workers realized the babysitter was making more money per hour watching those four kids, than they made with their master’s degrees, more money than the mother would make as a registered nurse.
At some point there are so many children in a family that the parent’s income simply can’t justify the cost of the childcare. That is the point where it is cheaper for the taxpayers to tell the mom to stay home, take the TANF money, and take care of her own kids. If the babysitters are paid the way college graduates expect to be paid, the childcare will cost more money per hour than the parents earn, and the incentive to work will vanish.
What you are proposing sounds fantastic but is totally impractical.
It was the child care programs at the V0Tec schools, not the colleges. Right decision regardless.
Pay stay at home moms instead of daycare centers.
Like that’s ever gonna be possible with a Legislature as R as this one. Next thing ya know they’d pay for parental leave. Oh, wait, that’s “socialism” or something, according to those cretins in Congress like Boebert.
That was how welfare used to work: the state paid single mothers to stay home and take care of their own children. Welfare moms weren’t expected to work, as long as they had a child under six in the home. So these moms would give birth at least once every six years. If mom couldn’t get pregnant, the job of keeping the money coming in would fall to a teenaged daughter.
it was the realization that children growing up in households where nobody ever got up and went to work was creating generations of people who never got jobs, they just had babies.
So then there was a work requirement. But of course, somebody had to pay for the childcare so these mothers could work, and the state decided the providers should be licensed, AND decided what they should be paid per hour per child. And child care got very expensive for parents who were not on welfare.
Anne, what a slap in the face to stay at home mothers. I am not talking about single mothers. I thought the Republican party was the party of family values. Apparently daycare centers can do a better job raising children than parents. That’s the problem now days, the government does not promote policies that benefit the nuclear family. They should stay the hell out of everything they are trying to socialize. Just like education. I hope Haaugard campaigns on school choice and children. What’s really sad is we have lost our neighborhoods. You just don’t see kids playing outside anymore.
Tara you are missing the point: like anything else, once government starts paying for something for low-income people, the cost of that goes up for everybody else.
Government got into paying for childcare for welfare mothers, but required the providers to be licensed. I wasn’t on welfare, but every time a babysitter got licensed she raised her rates. She could fill her home with the children of welfare moms and if I couldn’t pay the same rate, I had find someone else.