Bob,
Public Education is a monopoly...and whether our children
go to a public school, private school, home school, or
they are grown up or we don't have any children...We all
pay through our Property taxes/State Taxes/ and thanks
to Democratic President Jimmy Carter and his creation
of the Federal Burearucracy: The Department of mis-
Education we also pay at the Federal Tax level!
Anyway, the teachers unions know that parents in this
country are getting fed up with the ever increasing
dollars being spent on public education vs. the low
quality of curriculum, lack of accountability to parents,
and the lack of safety in public schools and they are starting
with Vermont as a test case to eliminate any chance
of Parents or any other taxpayer for that matter, getting
back any of the ever increasing property taxes...!
New Hampshire is rumored to be next..and then the
rest of the country...with property taxes going up 50%
or more!
The small state of Vermont (just under 600,000) rates only a single member in the U.S. House of Representatives. Bernie Sanders happily characterizes himself as a socialist, and there is no question that he faithfully represents a large Vermont constituency or that he is in harmony with its Zeitgeist. This is the Vermont of aging flower children and macram‚ moguls; of Ben and Jerry's, Bennington College, and high-mileage Saabs bearing faded bumper stickers that read, "One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Whole Day."
There is another Vermont, however, of people whose ancestors were born in the state, who generally work with their hands, and who carry in their genes the spirit of individualism and fierce yeomanry of their patron saint, Ethan Allen. Allen was as much of a kook, in his time, as Sanders is in his. But he stood up to the big land owners and their agents in what were the first skirmishes in the American Revolution. Old Ethan didn't much like people in distant places exercising power over him, his money, or his land. His spirit, though attenuated, still lives in the Green Mountains.
Finally there are Vermonters of convenience. Yuppies, second home owners, writers, artists, consultants, cyber-citizens, and retirees who have left the cities and suburbs of New York, New Jersey, and New England for Vermont's small towns or the little boutique city of Burlington.
These three factions are currently at war. It is an interesting struggle, not least because, unlike almost everything else that happens in the state, this fight has national implications.
The fight is about schools and how to pay for them. Beneath the angry rhetoric and familiar pieties about "fairness" and what is "best for the children" lie elements of class warfare and the usual lusts for power. The state's towns are pitted against one another in a struggle over who pays and how much, who gets gouged and who gets a pass. It has resulted in one town, so far, saying the hell with it and closing its public school; in several other towns threatening not to comply with the law and withhold funds from the state; and in a call by a former candidate for governor that Vermonters arm themselves against the forces of tyranny. There hasn't been this much passion aroused by any political issue here since the early 1980's, when the legislature voted to allow deer hunters to kill does. This one is even bigger and angrier than that (which, if you live in Vermont, is hard to imagine).
The background, in a nutshell, is this:
For years, local communities have paid for their schools through property taxes. On the first Tuesday of March, according to the revered tradition of the town meeting, voters would assemble to discuss public issues and decide how much to spend on their school and other services. If the town voted to spend a hundred thousand, and there was ten million worth of property on the grand list, the tax rate would be one dollar per hundred dollars of property. If your house and property were worth one hundred thousand, you paid one thousand dollars. You could go to a town meeting, stamp your feet and argue that this was excessive and the school was being profligate. You could also make a nuisance of yourself at school-board meetings to make sure your money was being spent prudently. You had a voice.
By the mid-90's, spending per student in Vermont was sixth-highest in the nation. In a state where schools did not have to cope with inner-city pathologies, where educators did not have to spend money on metal detectors and security guards, this represented a strong commitment to education. The performance of Vermont students, as measured by the usual standardized tests, was in the average range. However, the fact that Vermont was not getting its money's worth from the schools was not seen as an urgent problem. The inequities in funding were.
The issue was debated and some schemes for aiding poorer towns with state revenues were put in place. But the wealthier towns were still able to spend as much as $11,000 per pupil and tax property at less than a dollar per hundred, while others were spending a third of that and taxing property at a rate twice as high. Predictably, somebody sued.
In 1997 the State Supreme Court ruled that what was unfair was also unconstitutional, even though the Vermont Constitution barely mentions education and has nothing to say about how it should be paid for. Supreme courts, however, are not deterred by such minor, technical considerations. Vermont's is composed of five political appointees who are basically government men, so the decision, while radical, was not unexpected.
After the Supreme Court decision, lawmakers could be creative and say, "The judges made me do it." The Democrat-controlled legislature wrote legislation to create a new, statewide method for funding education: a 105-page monstrosity which the Democratic governor, Howard Dean, signed into law, and which is now known by all Vermonters as Act 60. You can inject some life into any conversation by merely mentioning the name. It is like saying "Dreyfus" at a Paris dinner party in 1894.
For entire article:
spectator.org |
