Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article for the Louisville Courier Press on the House Democrats’ education funding proposal.

Base funding for schools would increase 2 percent in 2010 and the state would pay for full-day kindergarten for every student under an education budget unveiled yesterday by House Democrats.

The majority Democrats’ proposal, which the House Ways and Means Committee plans to amend into a bill as soon as today, relies on $100 million that would be transferred from a state reserve account.

The proposal is being introduced separately from the budget bill and funds the education proposal for only one year instead of two, which is unusual, out of recognition that the economic times are more uncertain and we really do not know where we will be a year from now in terms of need or in terms of ability to pay.

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels’ proposed budget would flat-line base funding for schools, as well as dollars for full-day kindergarten programs that the state has been phasing in. Daniels has resisted calls to use money from reserves for fear the economy will worsen and the state will have a greater need for those dollars later.

In fact, Gov. Daniels proposed budget would flat-line pretty much everything except prison spending. (This despite Indiana’s supposed economic ‘hot streak’. “Indiana is on an economic hot streak, thanks to Governor Daniels’ strong leadership and the pro-active business-minded skills he brought to state government[.]”)

I wonder if I am reading too much into this. Obviously prisons and schools are both things we need. But, times of crisis highlight priorities. When you have to give things up, even things you need, what do you hang onto until last? Which is our greater need? The need to punish or the need to educate? Lacking sufficient resources, will we choose to punish less or to educate less?

Now, obviously it is not as simple as all that. There are a lot of variables involved. But it should be interesting to see if there is tension between the need to fund prisons and the need to fund schools and, if so, which way our lawmakers tend to pull and, by extension, what that says about our culture.