According to a recent report from the USA, the American Educational Secretary, Betsy DeVos is considering making a significant investment into Schools should ideally come as welcome news. Although this information is not up to date, one imagines it still has some relevance:

“Public school funding in the United States comes from federal, state, and local sources, but because nearly half of those funds come from local property taxes, the system generates large funding differences between wealthy and impoverished communities. Such differences exist among states, among school districts within each state, and even among schools within specific districts. In 1998, for example, the state with the highest average level of public school funding (adjusted for differences in cost of living) was New Jersey, with an annual funding rate of $8,801 per student, whereas the state with the lowest average level was Utah, with a yearly rate of $3,804 per student (see fig. 1). This means that the typical student attending a public school in New Jersey was provided more than twice the fiscal resources allocated to his or her counterpart in Utah.”

Tragically the news regarding the proposed investment by the Trump Government will not have any impact on the inequality referred to above:

‘The US Education Department is weighing up whether to allow federal funding to buy guns for school teachers. The unprecedented move, by education secretary Betsy DeVos, would reverse a longstanding policy barring the federal government from equipping schools with firearms, The New York Times reported today. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said: “Betsy DeVos wants to turn the US government into an arms dealer for schools. That’s insane.”‘

The need for our Government and indeed any organisations that have the potential to be listened to by influential Americans seems pretty obvious in the light of this. The TES article goes on to state:

“The Education department’s move follows outrage at school shootings in Parkland, Florida, where a former student killed 17 students in February, and Santa Fe, Texas, where a 17-year-old pupil killed eight fellow students and two teachers in May. At the time of these shootings US President Donald Trump said arming teachers might be a way of stemming these mass attacks. A controversial position also held by America’s powerful gun lobby group, the National Rifle Association.”

At the time of these shootings a significant number of American people led by students called on their Government and wider society to prevent guns from being allowed into places such as schools and churches. At that time I used social media to ask some UK based church leaders that I know have connections with USA churches to contact their friends and persuade them to support this move. I have no idea if there was any response, certainly I did not get any feedback. It seems vital that once again the same attempt is made, in part because Betsy is a person who claims to be a Christian and according to this report at a 2001 gathering of conservative Christian philanthropists, she singled out education reform as a way to “advance God’s kingdom.”

Clearly asking the USA to fund schools for education and not for weapons is not necessarily the most important thing to focus on when there are much more acute failings in places such as Palestine, Yemen and Syria to name but 3, but if we are looking to strengthen our ties with the USA, this might be a good place to start!