Somehow, education funding seems like something that should a state responsibility.
Locally, we had two townships with separate, struggling school systems.
Then an “auto row” was established that fell just barely one side of the district boundary. The windfall of local taxes make one district rich. They have built fancy auditoriums and student centers. The other district is in financial straits. The disparity seems poor public policy. Education should not be like a lottery.
PS. No, my kids are in neither district. They are in state supported higher education.
Tough one. On the one hand, funds should be distributed equitably throughout the state. Makes sense. On the other hand, what if local residents want to voluntarily contribute more to their local schools to make them better-- should that be disallowed? What if communities decide, by referendum, to add parcel taxes (or some other tax) that can only go to the local school system? I’m OK with the former as long as the latter is allowed to take place.
The state should pool money to determine a minimum per-pupil expenditure by every school, and then let the locals do whatever they want on top of that.
This is the sort of problem that has been plaguing Texas for as long as I have been here.
It is known as Robin Hood. I think that some people looked at it as taxation without representation or something. You’d end up with schools in an area like Highland Park that were outfitted better than some colleges, and other schools with out of date text books.
The problem still isn’t resolved even as, according to wiki, there is a looming $25 billion shortfall.
I agree; here in Texas, it’s such a mess that it’s almost laughable.
Before the “Robin Hood” laws in the 80s and 90s, the school district I was in charged very high property taxes, but provided a very good level of service- late buses in middle school for athletes and band, among other things.
After the “Robin Hood” laws passed, the district realized that anything above and beyond a certain taxation level would be essentially stolen from them, so they lowered taxes to the required minimum, and now actually get money from the State, and maintain the same level of service they’d have had if they kept taxes high.
Why do so many places use property taxes to finance public education? Why not just get all that kind of stuff from the general fund (raise income taxes if you have to)? It’s obvious that in a place like CA where property values increase like crazy that the government has to looooove the instant tax hike anyone gets when they buy a new home, but it really, really pisses people off to have taxes increase so much and often so capriciously (hint: Prop 13).
It seems like tying education funding to property taxes makes people think the money should stay locally-- like it’s literally tied to the land or something.
As much as it would seem that some measure of equitable state funding would make sense, application of that concept almost always runs into serious troubles, and individual taxpayers are often resistant, even when they are also resistant to handing money over to their local schools.
For example, here in Ohio, most school district money comes from local property taxes. Several years ago, the state’s supreme court declared that system unconstitutional. In the years following, the legislature kept attempting to avoid the obvious result: state sponsored local education, and the supreme court kept saying, “No, we really mean that isn’t constitutional.” Finally, the court’s membership changed, and the issue was allowed to be dropped by the court.
The party not in favor of state funding? Republicans, who are the party of choice for a substantial majority of people in this relatively rural, farm state. So this resistance to state funding can be seen to represent the will of the people. Nevertheless, many rural districts struggle to make ends meet, because the same people who don’t want to see the state spend money on schools (loss of local control of schools) also don’t want to be taxed sufficiently to run a decent set of local schools. Ugh.
I think that has been effectively built into the American system from the get go. In this way, we are still taxing as it was 220 years ago. Local taxes to support local stuff. Public Schools are still considered local.
It gives some people (like me) a choice to move to a town that really treats the school system as the most important function of the town. This then keeps property values high as other parents want to move to the town with the better schools. My town is known for excellent schools, because of this, it attracts buyers that will spend more to get a good public school and so the voters tend to vote for council members that keep the schools as the #1 priority even if the voter in question has no kids in school. My town is so extreme that one Mayor lost his job when it was exposed he was trying to use his position to get his Daughter-in-Law a teacher position and she was not deemed qualified enough.
My taxes are high BTW, I think Jersey is top 3 for property taxes in the nation. I would not like to see a system of mediocrity in place. We made an informed choice of where to move. We sacrificed quite a bit to move to the town we chose. We did not by a McMansion on a Cul-de-sac or Waterfront property. We bought a nice house in a town with great schools.
Jim
This is a huge issue in CT as well, and as a former teacher and someone who is passionate about education, planning, urbanism, and smart growth this is, IMHO, one of the diceiest issues that we as a country face. The thing is, to my knowledge, there is really no good answer to the problem.
On one hand, making towns almost soley responsible for funding schools causes them to make a ton of horrible decisions growth-wise in order to keep the property tax role growing. It also results in horrible inequities in which the towns who have to provide the most services have the least money to do it with. And, as noted it forces people to choose between raising taxes and adequately funding education.
On the other hand, any sort of regional approach raises all sorts of sticky moral questions about the fairness of taxing one group to benefit another and people’s right to enjoy the benefits that the salary they’ve earned provides them.
Beyond this conflict, one also has to look all of the unfunded mandates that the federal government has imposed upon local schools like IDEA, NCLB, etc.; as well as the role of teacher’s unions, busing requirements, a lack of uniform educational standards, and a host of other issues all of which are what is making the cost of providing an education skyrocket.
Given all of these issues, how can we possibly come up with a solution to this vexing problem? I would point out that most other first world countries, many of which do a better job educating their children than us, have a nationalized educational system. At the same time, that system is unlikely here for the same reason that national helth care has yet to happen, as well as a result of our long tradition of home rule when it comes to education. We also have a history here of guaranteeing the same education to evereyone, which most other countries don’t.
All of this is a long way of saying, that resolving this issue would requrire resolving a host of other issues as well. Anyone who can do this is a smarter person than me.
Remember, too, that a lot of money in schools is directly donated–if an area knows that by raising property taxes, they will help their schools, they will often vote increases. If they think the money will just disappear from the community, they will vote no to taxes and give money directly.
I have mentioned this before, but in case anyone missed it–I teach in a large urban district. On our campus alone, private donations to the PTA have paid for a half-million dollar track/practice field complex on campus, fieldhouses for baseball and softball, trips for sports teams to training camps, a totally renovated teacher’s lounge and main office, dozens of new computers, air conditioning in the gyms, the debt on the musical (which allows us to have a nice musical), outfitted the weight room, subsidized prom to where it’s reasonable if not cheap, and paid for close to 20K in scholarships each year for our students. And that’s just the things I can think of–god knows how many little things have been quietly taken care of. The schools that don’t have the affluent parents we do don’t have any of that. I’m torn about it–on one hand, I hate that they don’t have it, but I don’t think there is anything wrong with our parents chosing to give their money to us.
My mother knows an administrator that works for the district that servers one of the richest neighborhoods in the state. She said they had to cut a very good employee that was doing some tutoring. When one parent found out she showed up, whipped out her check book and cut a check for the tutor’s yearly salary then walked out.