I find it fascinating that a group searching for ways to help cash-starved school districts with capital construction, a group with representatives from the legislature, K-12 education, home builders, and Stand for Children, has come up with these two rather meager proposals --a tax on development, and the use of lottery funds.
Lottery funds? As in state-sponsored gambling? That's hardly the broad-based source of revenue one would wish for. Or at least I would wish for. But then Stand for Children always seems to be arguing for a bigger cut of the state lottery for schools.
I'm all for broad-based school taxes. I'm also strongly in favor of local control of educational decision making. Unfortunately funding and control are often conflated. But surely, as far as funding goes, we can do better than the lottery (which should be abolished!)
Let me explain my thinking.
Why should schools be locally controlled?
Because people in Prineville and Burns, for example, are more likely to see the value of funding agricultural education or promoting chapters of Future Farmers of Amerca than the people who live in Portland. And urban districts, like Portland, are much more likely to stress the importance of assimilating, say, Haitian or Laotian students into the local culture.
Why broadly funded?
Because of the disparity of property wealth between districts. Students should never be denied adequate educational facilities (or good teaching) because of where they live.
The problem is that outside money often comes with strings attached (NCLB, for example.) That's why Texas school districts took to calling themselves independent districts, as in the Houston Independent School District. They didn't want the feds telling them what to do. Ironic, given that Houston in particular was the model for the highly intrusive No Child Left Behind legislation.
The problem with that thinking is that even local money, primarily from the property tax, goes to schools, or in the case of Portland, even other districts, over which the taxpayer has little direct control. In fact, most local money comes from people with no school-aged children. But frankly, who cares? If one sees public education as a vital government service and as part of the infrastructure of a civilized and enlightened society, where's the problem?
Unless of course you swallow the argument that we live in an era of scarce public resources and therefore demand strict accountability for how your precious tax dollars are spent.
That's all hogwash. First, we have accountability through democratically elected local school boards with open meetings. And the cry of "scarce resources" is merely a cover for the unwillingness to pay, with taxes, for the services that provide for the common good.
Here are my ideas for tapping into revenue that, unlike the Lottery, is truly broad-based:
- First, get rid of the kicker, both corporate and personal. Oregon is alone in refunding tax money based on faulty economic estimates.
- Raise corporate taxes and close corporate tax loopholes.
- Raise personal income taxes on the wealthiest Oregonians, the ones who benefited from the Bush tax cuts.
That's state revenue. But what about the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money now squandered in Iraq? It should go to education. Without strings attached! Nothing is more important for national security than a well-educated populace. Therefore I propose:
- First, the abolition of NCLB and its ridiclulous testing mandates. And its sanctions.
- Then (after we get out of Iraq) passing sane legislation --the Dems are now in control, aren't they?-- allowing block grants to states for help in funding schools, both for capital and operating expenses.
There's your broad-based funding for schools.
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