Gyeongnam Education Superintendent Kwon Soon-gi visited the National Assembly and called for local education autonomy and education finance to be guaranteed. He also called for the voices of city and provincial education offices and of schools to be reflected in discussions on restructuring the local education finance grant. Around the same time, on the 7th, civic society groups opposing the grant reform began an open-ended tent sit-in in front of the National Assembly in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul.
The superintendent went inside the National Assembly building, and the civic groups stayed in tents outside it.
The grant is money the state sends down to city and provincial education offices out of part of the taxes it collects. Education offices run a year of school finances on the basis of this money. City schools attended by thousands of students and island village schools whose entire enrollment can be counted on one hand do not stray far from this.
Superintendent Kwon's proposals were more specific. He asked the National Assembly to help secure education finance on a stable footing, and he named responses to regional extinction and region-tailored education as places where that money would be spent. In Gyeongnam, cities such as Changwon and farming, mountain and fishing villages sit together under one education office. How to run village schools with few students is a question tied to the future of those villages.
The superintendent put the words "school sites" into his demands.
Finance reform is often discussed as a fight over education office budgets and national tax revenue. But the ones who spend their days on that money are students and teachers. The Gyeongnam Office of Education put the reflection of on-site opinions on its list of demands.
Objections also emerged over money allotted to local governments. The Progressive Party took issue with the transfer of funds worth 162.3 trillion won and demanded the withdrawal of the reduction in local grant tax calculations. Lee Jeong-seok, chair of the Progressive Party's Mokpo City Committee, also opposed cutting the grant tax on the grounds of the future response fund transfer. The local grant tax goes to local governments, and the local education finance grant goes to education offices.
The tent sit-in has set no end date. Depending on the framework in which the National Assembly handles the grant reform, how far the demands set out by the Gyeongnam Office of Education are accepted will change, as will how long the tent in front of the National Assembly stands.
The education finance debate has long been drawn as a fight over budget tables. This time the superintendent visited the National Assembly with "school sites" out front, and civic groups pitched a tent with no time limit.
