Re: County Commission Told To Fully Fund County Schools Improvement Request Would Take 28 1/2-Cent Property Tax Increase; 78 School Personnel Would Be Added
No. No way. Really, NO! is not a big enough word to express my sentiments here. Even the exclamation point doesn’t add enough to do the job properly.
Mr. Coppinger said, “They are saying if you do this, we’re going to show you the return on your money. We have not seen this before.”
He can say that again. He’s absolutely right about that. We haven’t seen it before, and we won’t see it this time, either. Yes, the schools have received more money, time and again. More and more money. No, they haven’t shown consistent positive results anywhere near proportionate to the money they’ve been given to do their job.
We’re told, “A person owning a $100,000 house would pay an extra $71.25 per year in property taxes if the 28 1/2-cent increase request is approved.” That’s a disingenuous statement around here. Various sources state that average home values in Hamilton County are $122,800, $131,500, $138,900, up to $202,200. For that $200,000 home, the real extra tax would be more than $140. Per year. Every year from now on, unless you believe the rate will ever be reduced.
And if the homeowner lives in the city, then his effective tax increase will be essentially twice as much because the county tax rate determines city taxes. Suddenly the mayor’s supposedly trivial extra $71.25 becomes close to $300 per year, every year, forever and ever. And you don’t have to own a house to pay such taxes; bare, unusable property is taxed the same way. Of course, you don’t even need to have a child in any of the schools to be required to pay those taxes, either.
Every year we’re shown a disgusting list of county school top personnel salaries, and there’s never a real educator–not a single classroom teacher, not one person whose sole responsibility all day, every day is teaching– anywhere near those dozens of $100,000-plus salaries. But the average household income in the county is only about $47,000, down around the real teachers’ pay rate. That is total household income, not just one person’s salary. And in very few of those $47,000 households, with or without children, is it ever possible to demand, “I want a 6-3/4 percent increase in income right now!” and expect to get it.
So, let’s send this request right back to the school officials: First, prove you are serious about achieving genuine education. Prove your good intentions; get rid of enough of those unnecessary $75,000 to $100,000-plus head-office personnel, friends and family, idlers and drones and hangers-on, to pay for the extra 78 personnel who you claim would be “classroom involved,” and you can have all 78 of them. Then go back to teaching reading, writing, arithmetic, and the other real solid school subjects that we taxpayers took decades ago, and maybe you’ll finally have a real school system. Begin to turn out a majority of students who can read and write and figure, who can do something other than mouth off and play video games, and you’ll be doing some real educating for a change. Then maybe we’ll see about more money.
But in the meantime, how about you just do like the rest of us poor souls have to do? You know ... just do the best you can with what you’ve got.
After all, reading, writing, arithmetic, and a few other honest subjects enabled most of us who pay all of those taxes to get and hold a job, earn an income, pay our own way in life, and pay every fool tax that anybody has ever been able to think up. Why can’t that work for the schools now?
Maybe the operative word there is ‘work.’ Say what you will about the poor kids who have to go to schools that are below average. Maybe if all of the paid employees at those schools were really working for their pay, the schools wouldn’t be below average. Maybe if all of the kids who go to those schools really worked at being students, really worked at learning what was being made available to them, they might learn something in spite of the school’s circumstances. You know, this isn’t Lake Wobegon, and we’re not all above average.
Please notice that I did not say anything derogatory about the honest and earnest teachers who are on the front lines in this never-ending war on ignorance and apathy. (You know, that everlasting “I don’t know, and I don’t care!” army they fight every day.) I am perpetually disgusted, though, and thoroughly suspicious of the incredible disproportion of odd-named jobs and astronomical salaries that have no reasonable connection to the actual education of local kids.
And I’m not the only one, either.
Larry Cloud
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Larry,
I hope every tax paying citizen in Hamilton County, school official, and public official reads your article.
I wish you were running for superintendent; I believe the school system would make it.
Jim Rosenbloom