South Dakota Economy in Trouble According to Ernie Otten

Mr. Ernie Otten tried explaining why we simply can't help schools get more teachers to help our students: He pointed out that our economy is in trouble.  Revenue from lottery is down and it seems that a lot of other issues abound that will be the excuse for preventing sensible investment on education and the health of our state.  He pointed out that our economy is almost to the point of stagflation.  

Stagflation is defined as "persistent high inflation combined with high unemployment and stagnant demand in a country’s economy" according to Oxford Dictionaries.  I am not so sure about stagflation, but Ernie Otten's point was that the South Dakota's economy is in serious trouble.  An interesting way to justify not increasing funding for education and Medicare, since his party has had an iron grip on the economy and have been bragging about the amazing job they did in getting through the recession.  I mean Daugaard said so in the State of the State:

Daugaard mentioned in his speech that South Dakota's economy is booming. The state has 10,000 more jobs than it did before the recession.   

Daugaard proposed some new efforts to train people for jobs critical to South Dakota's economic development. 

He also touched on South Dakota's improving economy and on how the average income in the state is now among the highest in the nation.  

So what is it: Growth and plenty of money to invest and get education back after Daugaard gutted it or stagflation and approaching doom as suggested by Ernie Otten.  Funding in education is an investment that would help avoid the stagflation suggested by Ernie Otten.  Funding education would mean that schools could hire more teachers and begin to lower teacher-pupil ratios which has been proven to improve educational outcomes.  We need to get to the 3.8% as pointed out in the Argus Leader:

But adminstrators say they need 3.8 percent to begin reversing cutbacks they made after their budgets were slashed in 2011. 

“Three percent keeps us going. Teachers would get minimal increases in salary,” said Wade Pogany, executive director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota. “But it really doesn’t help restore what we had to cut.”

It is time for education to become the priority and not excuses as to why it can't be funded at a level that shows South Dakota has at least a little respect for education in our state.