How to properly fund our schools has been a question we have been struggling to answer for years.  Options range from having the state completely fund our schools to having parents pay for the education of their children.  Providing a public education has been an important part of American culture since the founding of this country.  Our forefathers knew that an educated population was essential for the country to be successful.  The Ohio constitution says that the legislature will provide for an adequate education.  This does not mean that the state will completely fund that education, but will provide the means for that education; whether it comes from the state, allowing the local community to collect taxes, or a combination of the two.  Currently, the state provides $5,700 per student to provide for that education, with the remaining money needed coming from the local community.  No matter the equation, the bottom line is that our schools are funded completely by tax dollars; all we are really arguing about is the collection method.  With that in mind, the real question to me is how we fund our schools with the least impact on tax payers.  As I wrote in my previous post, the more money we accept from big government, the more regulations and restrictions we will have placed upon us.  It is not that we are not providing enough money to our schools; it is how those dollars are being spent.  Our local schools have so many mandates placed upon them by the government that our local educators have limited control over education and spending.  These mandates were designed to address issues in large schools located in our largest cities and do not necessarily apply to our smaller schools.  The cost of implementing those mandates consumes a larger percentage of our smaller school’s budgets and in many cases is simply not cost effective. 

            Rather than turn to government to solve our problems, I propose that we resolve this issue where it occurs, at the local level.  In my judgment, we need to reduce the mandates placed on our schools and allow our local officials more control over our schools.  We elect our local school board members and we hire our superintendents and principals; we do so because we think that they can do the job.  I think it is time we let them do that job.  Our schools are representative of our communities.  Our local educators know the morals and values of our communities.  They need the control to be able to determine what to teach and how to teach it, they need the control to determine where best to apply our tax dollars to most efficiently and effectively educate our students.

            Predominately, we generate our local funding from property taxes which is wrong for both the tax payers and the schools.  As tax payers, we don’t pay our bills with our property value; we live off of our income.  Those that are retired and living on a fixed income face rising inflation eating into their income putting them in dire financial straits.  Property taxes also put our schools on a fixed income.  Regardless of whether property values rise or if the number of students in the district significantly rise, the school essentially receives the same amount of revenue from a property tax.  Just as inflation eats into our income, higher utility bills, higher medical insurance premiums, and other elevated costs eat into our schools’ income.  A much better method of collecting local taxes is through an earned income tax.  It is better for tax payers because it does not tax those that are living on their retirement income.  If a tax payer finds their income reduced through layoff, downsizing, outsourcing, or having to take a lower paying job, their tax liability is reduced accordingly.  As the economy improves and prevailing wages rise, revenue to our schools also rises and provides a hedge against inflation, preventing the need to put additional tax levies on the ballot.  Schools that have adopted permanent income taxes to fund their schools have essentially eliminated the need to ask for additional funding.

            By giving our school officials control to determine how best to educate our children and how to spend our precious resources efficiently and effectively and by utilizing an earned income tax; we can improve our children’s education and do it with fewer tax dollars.

“There is no such thing as a free lunch”; “You can’t get something for nothing”. We have all heard and recited these phrases many times, these words may have never been truer than today. Whether we are talking about individuals, schools, small businesses, or major corporations, whenever the government offers money in the form of welfare, subsidies, or bailouts, there is a price to pay. This price is steep and it is paid by us all. Our social spending, the war on poverty and the New Deal, has cost this nation billions of taxpayer dollars with nothing to show for it. If poverty were simply a situation of having no money, we would have eradicated poverty years ago. Agriculture subsidies come with regulations that restrict what farming practices farmers can use. It limits what they can grow and where they can grow it. Our administrators have lost local control of our schools since accepting increased federal and state funds, exponentially increasing the cost to operate our schools. Individually, when we accept government payments there are also restrictions and expectations placed upon us. State and federally funded universal health care will come with the expectation of modified behaviors; tobacco products, fast food, and foods considered unhealthy will all be heavily taxed, restricted and in some instances even outlawed. Risky behaviors will be restricted and more regulations will be enacted, all for “our own good”. Helmets will be required for motorcycle riders, all passengers in an automobile or bus will be required to use seatbelts, gun ownership and even carrying a pocket knife will be restricted and banned. These advancements in regulation upon the citizenry have already occurred in Great Britain since adopting Universal Health Care.

Our current “economic crisis” is another prime example of paying dearly for a “free lunch” as government tries to inject itself into the free market. Capitalism, lack of regulation, or oversight is not to blame for our current situation. Our current problems started with the New Deal but were greatly exacerbated over ten years ago with the creation of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. These are government run agencies that determined success not by merit or real earnings, but by a social agenda for the purpose of giving loans to individuals that could not qualify for traditional loans and were high risk for repayment of those loans. This type of subversion of the free capitalist market skewed the market, artificially elevating home and stock values. Home owners as well as investors saw their portfolios grow seemingly overnight because of this “free lunch”. What we are now facing is nothing more than a necessary correction of these markets. Unfortunately, so many financial institutions, businesses, and individuals are so heavily leveraged that they cannot survive these devaluations and are becoming financially insolvent. As this happens, banks don’t know who next will default on a loan or declare bankruptcy; therefore banks have tightened the flow of money and are limiting loans to other banks, businesses, and individuals. Even responsible businesses and individuals cannot borrow money no matter how good their credit rating is. Now, the same government that thought injecting itself into the banking industry was a good idea wants to apply even greater controls over all aspects of not only the financial industry, but to all businesses and individuals. Instead of having to live through this “bitter pill” for several months, our government wants to extend this misery for several years. The Great Depression was brought about by a very similar type of government intervention and it lingered for ten years because of government interference. Government intrusion will not prevent the correction; in trying to control and soften the blow of the correction, government will simply cause the effects to be felt for a much longer period of time and costing us all even more money in the long run.

In the event of this bailout, there will be no accountability. The market will not be cleansed of those entities that utilized bad business practices; those entities will still exist and will continue to apply the same bad business principles that put them in this very predicament. In my judgment, we need to allow the marketplace to determine the winners and losers; we need to allow the losers to fade into the history books while allowing the winners to grow and newcomers to the market to be allowed to compete. Those businesses that apply sound business practices should be allowed to succeed and not be held down by the losers that are being artificially supported by an intrusive government at the taxpayers’ expense. The apparent economy of the 1990’s may have been a wonderful feast, but as we taxpayers will soon find out, there is no free lunch.