By Steve Thompson, Chairman of the Butte County Republican Party
If anything has become clear for more and more voters, it’s that our current system of government has some serious flaws. I’m not talking about democracy, which despite its flaws still beats every other kind of government. I’m talking about the way we fund and participate in our government.
How many reading this actually know what our state budget is and where the money is spent? How many reading this could answer (without checking) the question of how much taxes you pay in a year? I’m betting many of you could remember how much of a rebate you got back, but not how much you paid. Is it any wonder so many people don’t care to vote, when they don’t really feel like they have a financial stake in the process, or skin in the game?
This week I’m taking a look at school funding in California. Before 1972 schools were funded by local property taxes. As you can guess, some schools were better funded than others. Being California, someone from a poor district didn’t like this and not only sued the state, but won. This state supreme court decision was known as Serrano vs. Priest, and it flipped school funding on its head.
The new law demanded equity and adequacy for all public schools. So the state legislature (you know how well those guys always do, right?) came up with a new system in which property taxes were sent to the state and redistributed, supposedly evenly, amongst all the schools in the state.
So think about it. Just a few years ago you voted for a huge property tax to build a new music department for your school, and now the state is raiding the money to give to someone else’s kids. How would you feel?
Most taxpayers were pretty ticked off. In fact, they were so ticked off after this action that many people believe this lead to the passage of Prop 13, which limited the government’s ability to take away our money through higher property taxes. It makes sense actually. Polling shows that most voters are against higher taxes, unless it is going directly to something that helps their children, in which case they tend to be OK with paying a little more. What they don’t like doing is paying more to finance welfare queens, illegal immigrants, and Nancy Pelosi’s exorbitant bar tab. Hence the rise of the TEA parties.
Now here it is 2010, and I think most people, right or left, would agree that something is screwed up with our financing of public schools. To make matters worse, a new group of low-income parents are suing the state on the basis that California’s inadequate and inequitable school funding deprives all children of their equal opportunity to a “meaningful education.”
Republicans have been making the case for years now, that California’s school system denies an equal opportunity for education to inner city youth. We used to argue for vouchers to help get kids from failing schools into private schools. Today we have found that charter schools, which are less mired in bureaucracy, tend to provide the alternative education that struggling kids need. Unfortunately, teachers unions and a lot of school boards have a natural dislike for charter schools.
Even if charter schools are working, the financing of public schools is not. We pay out tens of billions, nearly half of our entire state budget, into our school system. Yet the results are failing schools with unhappy teachers, unhappy parents, and kids who are not learning the fundamentals. More than half of them need remedial education if and when they reach college.
I believe it is time for radical change in how we fund our schools. It’s time to go back to the old system of letting counties fund and control their own school systems. Now before you knee-jerk so hard you smash the tiny dashboard of your prius, think about it. Who do you think is more responsive to your needs as a parent: state legislators, or your county supervisor? Who is easier to throw out of office if they stop representing their constituents. Who would have more interest in doing what is right by your kids? Clearly, county supervisors represent at a level closer to the people than state legislators do. It’s only natural as they represent far less people, so to can they be more responsive to our needs. We only ignore county supervisors now because the state has pretty much emasculated them of any real power.
Aren’t you tired of seeing our tax dollars go to Sacramento only to be sucked into the abyss? Wouldn’t you rather see your local property taxes go to fund your own local schools? And if the whole point of letting the state control our schools was to make the school system better and more equitable, isn’t it clear that this is not happening?
If there was ever an area where I would entertain a compromise on Prop 13, this is it. I could see voting for changes that put school funding back under local control. This is tax reform that would be well worth studying and advocating for. I encourage anyone reading this to do so and let us all know how you feel. Please, jump in and tell me why this wouldn’t work, I’d really like to know.