2/19/11

02:32am
A quick thought on school funding
I received this in an email this morning.  It was talking about Governor Rick Snyder’s new budget and how funding for k-12 dropped, but college funding increased or stayed the same. (It also talked about other things like teachers increased retirement tax rate and such that I don’t really want to get into)  From a section of the email:

“We believe the governor's proposal is a direct hit at the intentions of Michiganders who voted for Proposal A. When voters chose to setup a state funding system for schools through an expanded sales tax and the State Education Tax on property taxes, they were sold a system to adequately fund their local schools. Now, with revenue for schools actually looking like it might do better than expected, the governor has to disinvest in public schools in the name of ‘shared sacrifice.’”

Now, I think the intentions of the Michiganders who voted for Proposal A was to tie school funding to SALES TAX AND PROPERTY TAXES.  The problem happens when you want to increase funding for schools and property values decrease while people loose jobs and don’t BUY things.  If people don’t BUY things, the government can’t TAX them.  So, as much as I think it sucks that funding for schools is decreasing, when you tie funding to these things, and those things don’t increase or actually DECREASE like they did with property/house values, those funds dry up and sometimes decrease.

It’s clichéd for a reason: “we are ALL tightening our belts.”