Wayne Blanton Quotations

It's the most outstanding education budget I've seen in my 31 sessions.

We can't keep up. We're four and a half billion dollars short on the construction side. If that's what you have to trade for five more students, then that's maybe what it takes to trade.

We have tremendous concerns in three areas: transportation, because of rising fuel costs; utilities, because of rising fuel costs; and increases in health care costs. We could have given teachers a 7 percent pay raise instead of taking those things away. We could have hired more of those teachers at a higher salary.

Overall, it's going to be an excellent year.

Overall, it's a very good budget. It's a 6 percent to 7 percent increase. Considering what other states are doing, it's substantial.

Overall, it's a very good budget, especially looking at his proposal for teacher recruitment and retention.

That's the biggest issue. Various districts have different definitions of moral turpitude.

For the governor or the Legislature to always say that this is a one-size-fits-all solution usually does not work, and it takes a cooperative effort.

We think we're going to get it fixed legislatively. It has always been our policy that we'd rather legislate than litigate.

Our position is that statewide, the school board has a budget and allocates money to all schools in their district. We don't want legislation, the courts or anyone else telling us where to spend portions of (the districts') budgets.