School Funding

Beatrice made a comment in another thread that I wanted to respond to but, to do so there would be to take that thread in another directions so I decided to reply in another thread.

While George W. Bush was governor of Texas, the state enacted a law that was intended to equalize school funding across the state.

The idea behind this misguided law was that some schools were advantaged because they were in wealthy, often white, areas with rich alumni who would contribute financially to the school, giving that school a significant advantage over those in poorer areas without the same philanthropic base.

Under that law, significant contributions to any one school would have to be distributed to poorer schools that were more in need of it.

It went further than that. School districts in wealthy areas took in more tax money for their schools, and that too would be distributed to the poorer schools.

Technically, the money wasn't redistributed, but the amount of money that benefactor schools received from the state would be reduced while that going to the poorer schools was increased, so that was the result.

What should have been an obvious result was that wealthy alumni greatly reduced their contributions since much of the money wasn't going to go to the school they intended it for, anyhow.

Before that happened, the poorer schools in the state suddenly received a large influx of cash.

The Hidalgo School District, which had been acknowledged as the poorest school district in the entire state, used that money to send their school board and higher school officials on a two-week trip to Hawaii, where they attended a seminar on, of all things, financial responsibility.

The school superintendent, principals, vice principals, and other administrative staff received substantial raises, and I don't know if any of this newfound wealth ever found its way into the classroom.

Yes, there is a cost involved in running an effective school system, but a large percentage of most school budgets are spent on things that don't do a thing for educating children.

Where I live, our town is, I think, one of the poorest towns in the state right now. During the depression, we were the second richest. With the loss of the paper mill, which employed three-fourths of the town directly, and most of the rest of the town indirectly, the tax burden now falls on homeowners, many of whom are unemployed or retired. A couple of years ago, we were the highest taxed town in the state, and I don't think that has changed.

Yet, although our school population has been decreasing every year since the 1970s, the school budget goes up every year, and no one can do anything about it because school district employees are almost the only people still working here so, between them and their families, they represent the largest voting block, so no one who hopes to be reelected will go against them.

The largest part of the town budget goes to the town. Over the past decade, the town has cheated its retirees out of their retirement packages and has laid off employees in pretty much every area of town government, including the police department, and borrows money every couple of years.

Yet the school budget goes up every year. Our teachers are well paid, one hundred percent of their medical expenses are paid, and they not only have an excellent retirement package but many of them keep working after they retire, receiving their retirement package plus a salary.

We have two school campuses, an elementary school and a campus shared by the middle school and high school. We have a school superintendent, three principals, and three vice-principals, each of which have their own staff. Yet, we have 254 elementary students, 123 middle school students, and 245 high school students, and those numbers go down each year, while the costs go up.

Yes, schools have to have a budget, but I think that most every school in the country is overfunded. School administrators are greatly overpaid, teachers are very well paid, staffing levels are larger than they need to be, and throwing more money at the problem doesn't help.

When I lived in Los Fresnos, Texas, the school district owned a very large and beautiful home that was intended for the school superintendent, and they also supplied a car, on top of a generous salary and benefit package.

They hired a new superintendent who didn't want to live in that house, so it sat empty while the school district leased another large home for him to live in. The car was a few years old so the superintendent bought a new expensive car in his name, then leased it to the school district for his use. This did produce a scandal but nothing changed.

 

Within the same school district, I would expect that all schools within the district would be given the same advantage as far as tax money goes.

However, if the alumni of one school want to contribute a large sum of money to the school that they graduated from, should that money be distributed to another, more needy school, instead? If so, then don't expect alumni to be so generous in the future. If not, someone needs to start showing up at school board meetings.

For whatever reason, perhaps the alumni of your schools don't make contributions but it's not at all unusual for private contributions to be made to one school or another, often by people who have graduated from that school and have connections in the area. Many alumni set up foundations for the support of the school.

The East Millinocket School District got a bunch of money from a former graduate who had won the Megabucks a few years ago. Would she have contributed if that money was going to go to some other school that she had no connections to?

In Texas, which was the first part of what I was talking about, the taxpayers in some districts were being taxed more heavily for the maintenance of their schools than in other school districts. In many cases, they agreed to pay more in school taxes because the education of their children was important to them and, in others, simply because they could afford it. To take that money, which was collected from the taxpayers of one district, and distribute it to another, whose taxpayers were not paying to adequately fund their own schools, that is the socialist idea of redistributing wealth.

In Texas, the poorest district in the state chose to reward themselves with a trip to Hawaii and wage increases rather than using it to improve the quality of the schools within that district. That is the natural outcome of socialist policies.

 

The Huffington Post says that Massachusetts has the best school system in the country, while Nevada has the worst. If you were to apply the Texas system of redistribution across the country, is it fair for Massachusetts taxpayers to have most of their school taxes sent to Nevada?

If money were the solution, this would bring the level of the Massachusetts schools down while raising the levels of the schools in Nevada, except that Massachusetts taxpayers would be paying the bulk of the expense and, in return, they would see a decrease in the quality of their own schools. That's cool if you're from Nevada, but not so cool if you live in Massachusetts.

Of course, if I lived in Massachusetts, I would be far less willing to agree to high school taxes given that my own children wouldn't be seeing the benefit and if I were from Nevada, I would see little reason to increase my school taxes since that would mean that I'd get less from Massachusetts.

It's a feel-good socialist policy that doesn't work.