No Property Taxes = Better Education (Part 1), 8-28-2010

Thank Tony Bennett's State of Education speech for this post. Matthew Tully wrote a column how the Democrats in the Indiana House of Representatives are obstructing a new age of better education in Indiana. Tully and the Republicans put much of the problem on the teacher's union.

I disagree with Tully. I think both parties refuse to think out of the box, but the Republicans are using the issue for its anti-unionism campaign.

 

Indiana's schools now exist without any overarching organization. We are playing with a system that originated at the township level, then mutated to accommodate the growth of cities and shifting of populations. 

As I recall the Indiana Constitution, that document imposes a duty on the state government regarding education.

I say Indiana shirked its constitutional duty by placing education funding on the backs of local property owners. Perhaps in the days when Indiana's largest employer was General Motors, this was viable. Not now.

I came of age in Anderson in the last days of its grandeur as a General Motors town. Its school system benefitted from all those factories. Yet most of its citizens, including its students, saw only one use for an education past high school - as the means of escape. A high school diploma was needed to get a factory job. Where else could one live a middle class life with a middle income, but with General Motors.

Today, we live in a world where Anderson's children compete with kids in Tokyo, Frankfurt, Dublin, Delhi, and Hong Kong. New York and so on. Our schools cannot compete so long as school funding depends on property taxes.

I say the schools must get their basic funding for education from state funds. State funds mean having a real income tax. Any education debts without addressing funding and taxes is a fraud.

Removing the property tax as funding for basic education removes the need for separate school boards and corporations. Put the organizational entity at the county level. Instead of five school boards in Madison County, there would be one with one superintendent. Indianapolis would squeal.

[To be continued in No Property Taxes = Better Education (Part 2), 8-28-2010. sch 3/15/23.]

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